Comparative Ethnographic Narrative

The purpose of this S-STEP research is to investigate the use of Comparative Ethnographic Narrative (CEN) in teacher education to facilitate teacher-to-teacher conversations focused on transcultural teacher acculturation. How can self-study and a critical friend help improve teaching? How does a teacher educator’s reflective journey along with a critical friend deepen understanding of student experiences while revealing institutional, cultural, and methodological complexities students can’t see? Specifically, this research is focused on several CEN lessons and hands-on learning activities with domestic and international graduate students from a wide range of cultural contexts. The aim of these lessons is to teach students how to conduct research using CEN. The lessons provide students with a working example of qualitative research, utilizing narrative inquiry and an introduction to this form of inquiry. This study connects my teaching and research and helps to clearly show that relationship to students. The findings include four themes revealing a coherent pedagogy in which CEN activities (Theme 1), conducted within transcultural learning communities (Theme 2), using powerful metaphorical tools (Theme 3), embedded in experiential philosophy (Theme 4), produce meaningful learning outcomes. This S-STEP research has resulted in improvements to my teaching of CEN to international students, particularly around balancing activity time with theoretical framing and varying group configurations to maximize cross-cultural exchanges.