Tell Me Your Story: A Reflection Strategy for Preservice Teachers.

Storytelling as Teacher Reflection Tell me your story is a phrase popularly being promoted in the business setting during recent years: Marketing companies are finding that stories better communicate with and engage people [e.g., "Forget about PowerPoint and statistics. To involve people at the deepest level, you need stories" (McKee & Fryer, 2003, p. 51; Jensen, 2003)]; management consultants find storytelling to be more effective in bringing forth change and improvement within employees (Denning, 2004, 2005); and human resource advisors find it to be an effective interview technique (Ibarra & Lineback, 2005). Lawyers are also encouraged to utilize storytelling in their practice. As James Boyd White (1985) writes, "The mind that tells a story ... finds its meaning in representations of events as they occur in time, in imagined experience ... the lawyer must recognize (this) within himself.... It should be equally evident that he must learn how to tell a story, and how to listen to one" (p. 243). Storytelling is also widely used in various forms of counseling, such as religious counseling, abuse counseling, and career counseling (Alexander, 1988; Baldwin, 2005; Brott, 2001). Narrative can be described as the means by which people attach meaning to experience through the telling and retelling of personal stories to evaluate the past and create purpose for the future. Narrative and story can be viewed synonymously, as Polkinghorne (1988) defines both as "the fundamental scheme for linking individual human actions and events into interrelated aspects of an understandable composite" (p. 13). However, it is more than a mere chronological listing of events. While narrative does serve as a structure for organizing events and human actions as a whole, it also attributes "significance to individual actions and events according to their effect on the whole ... a symbolized account of actions that includes a temporal dimension" (Polkinghorne, p. 18). An example of the value and power of narrative can be seen in the work of Coles (1989), whose use of literature and stories helped people overcome obstacles in human relationships. By using narrative from novels and stories with his own students, Coles found that people began to view characters as friends who could help them make choices, find direction, identify moral hazards, and better understand their own personal situations and experiences. Indeed, it seems stories can be powerful forces in directing and changing our lives (Noddings, 1991). The notion that teachers should be reflective about their practice is not a new one, but rather one that has grown more prominent over time. It is grounded in the work of Dewey (1933), who viewed reflection as a specialized form of thinking that emancipates us from merely impulsive and merely routine activity. Put in positive terms, thinking enables us to direct our actions with foresight and to plan according to ends in view of purposes of which we are aware--"It enables us to know what we are about when we act" (p. 17). Proponents of reflection (Crookes & Chandler, 2001; Johnson & Button, 2000; Price, 2001; Rock & Levin, 2002; Sax & Fisher, 2001; Schon, 1983, 1987; Valli, 2000; van Manen, 1990) claim that the focused and critical assessment of our own behavior enables us to make intelligent and informed decisions. By consciously examining and assessing our present situation from the perspective of our past experiences, we can take an active role in shaping our professional growth. Being reflective enables us to become empowered and informed decision-makers as well as independent learners. As teacher educators, we recognize the link between reflection and professional development and actively search for means to encourage preservice teachers to be reflective about their student teaching experiences. Noted educational theorist and psychologist Jerome Bruner (1987) asserted that "self is a perpetually rewritten story" and that humans are all constantly engaged in "self-making narrative," as "in the end we become the autobiographical narratives by which we tell about our lives" (p. …