taken-for-granted beliefs and authority within the existing culture (Lather, 1986, p266). Itwas this reciprocity in my research that implied both a give-and-take and a mutual negotiation of meaning and power. In this way reciprocity as a matter of both intent and degree was met within my research design.
these four units were part of the prescribed biology curriculum and were units on cell division, reproduction and genetics. Policy determined and dictated the teaching of these units in biology at this time of the school year as it did with when the various units were to be taught to the students.
The units were taught over a period of 12 weeks from the 21 August 2000 to the 10 November 2000 with a one-week vacation at the end of September. All lessons taught were audiotaped. At the end of each unit, except for the unit on biological determinism, the students were given a test that tested only the biology content that was taught. Anything outside the content, this being the discourse around oppression and discrimination and biology's contribution in this regard was not examinable - as expected by the formal biology curriculum.
The school timetable worked on a nine-day cycle with each lesson being of an hour's duration.
During this cycle of nine days I would meet with the students for six biology lessons. Lessons on cell division took four weeks and were taught between the 21 August and 13 September. Of the 13 lessons on cell division thirty minutes of one lesson was used for testing. The next three weeks, from the 14 September to the 10 of October, were spent on human reproduction. At the end of September the school broke for a week's vacation and on our return we continued with lessons on human reproduction. This unit had in it fourteen lessons. In the first week one of the lessons was used to review the test written on cell division and the last lesson was used for a thirty-minute test on human reproduction. This was followed by a three-week session on genetics from the 11 October to the 7 November. Of the twelve one-hour long lessons the third lesson was used to review the test written on human reproduction. Lesson eleven was used for a test that was set for forty-five
minutes. During the last lesson I went through the test, which I had not as yet marked, and then shared with the students that I would be teaching a section outside of the prescribed syllabus. The last three lessons for the fourth term, from 8 to 10 November, focused on biological determinism using extracts from Gould' s (1981) Mismeasure ofMan. The students then went into their final year-end Grade 11 examination that would determine whether or not they progressed to Grade 12.
As I taught each unit I used 'openings' that presented themselves in the prescribed content to raise issues around existing visible oppressions and subordinations. Unit four was a unit I made part of the curriculum titled biological determinism. This unit was introduced to the biology class with the declaration that it was not part of the formal examinable curriculum. Using my position of authority as teacher I gave students no choice about the introductory lesson. The students however, were informed in this introductory lesson that at the end of the lesson they would have the right to choose whether we continued or discontinued with this unit of work that was not part of the examinable
curriculum. This was a silent coercive strategy on my part. Given our difficulties in the classroom and beyond in engaging with discrimination and racism my gut feel was that the greater number of students would wish to engage with this unit. If they chose not to then I would have to analyse and theorise around their unwillingness to engage on issues of racism and race. Students did choose to work with this unit after the introductory lesson.
Each of the units taught lent themselves to questions about existing oppressions and subordinations.
Cell division opened itself to engagement around the issue of gender through my questioning the use oftenns 'daughter' and 'mother' cell. Students engaged with their understandings of the nonnative roles ascribed to women as nurturer's and responded to my critique of biology as a subject that served to silently reinforce such nonnative roles through its language. Reproduction provided the basis to classroom discussions on gender issues, teenage pregnancies, abortions and sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and AIDS. Genetics provided opportunities for linking abortion with ethics and discussions on cloning, racism and homosexuality. Biological determinism engaged with the history of science and its role on the validation of race and racism and its social practice and also on the issue of male/female roles in society.
I wanted to know how the students I worked with, directly or indirectly over a period of four years of secondary schooling, saw themselves - both as biology students when in my classroom and as persons in a world strewn throughout with both visible and not visible race, gender, class, religious, language and power discriminations. I provoked students during the biology lessons by raising questions around that which I considered discriminatory in the biology content because it was through this that existing oppressions and subordinations continued to be perpetuated.Itwas this that elicited student dis/agreement with the understandings I shared and then provided for further discussion during student interviews. Student reflexivity as part of classroom praxis may have worked to engender possible transformation; in this time it is also possible there may have also been instances where the provocation and resulting debates in the biology classroom served not only to create resistance but to also reproduce existing oppressions and subordinations - both verbalised and silent amongst the students in the class.
4.5.3 The Interviews: From Thick Description To Storytelling
Audiotaped lessons were transcribed and listened to repeatedly to guide the development of an interview schedule. The interview questions were then used to carry out semi-structured interviews
with students from the class. Through the interviews I hoped to be able to engage more deeply with student experiences of racism and related oppressions and subordinations. During each interview the student as a participant was encouraged to share her/his experiences of oppression and
subordination in the biology classroom, the school and in the wider community. I had shared with the class my intentions of interviewing students as part of my research and suggested that those students who felt comfortable about being interviewed do so. The ten students who then participated in the interviews did so voluntarily. I got to know who these students were through a response sheet that at the same time provided me with some data about each student. The data provided
information about the student's race, gender, religion, parents' occupation and address (see
Appendix 1). I obtained parental consent telephonically from each parent for each student interview.
Permission for the student to meet with me at the school during the school vacation was also sought and obtained from the parent. Throughout the interview the student was free to say what s/he
thought. During the course of the interview'intruding associations' (Luttrell, 2000, pS13) that I had used to provoke students with during biology lessons emerged. Intruding associations were those parts of the student's life that alerted the student to visible oppressions and subordinations as the student engaged in a reflexive process through the interview. Those oppressions and subordinations that were not visible also emerged. Sometimes, as the student spoke and the non-visible oppressions and subordinations in her/his life became visible to the student, the conflict and confusion that shaped such a realisation also became 'part' of the interview discourse. Each student was also invited to read how her/his thoughts were transcribed into text and free to comment.
Both the classroom interactions during the biology lessons and the subsequent interviews with the students changed our relationship. I was willingly 'forced' into participating in self-revealing and vulnerable ways - my revelations and vulnerability allowed students to share their own inner turmoil in the public space of the classroom, in small groups and in our one-on-one conversations.
In this way the research became a part of our everyday 'humdrum' life that we lived through at the school.
I transcribed each of the student interviews. I read through the data repeatedly so that I could begin to identify and generate themes around racism and related oppression and subordinations
experienced by the students. I also followed through with a suggestion from a meeting with doctoral student cohorts and supervisors that I try re-presenting the data as stories. This filled me with trepidation because it was outside what I was familiar with. As shared by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) storytelling is a disciplined line of work identified as narrative inquiry and'in the
construction ofnarratives ofexperience there is a reflexive relationship between living a life story, telling a life story, retelling a life story and reliving a life story' (p 71). When narrative inquiry is that which attempts to make sense of life as it is lived, it tries to figure out the'taken-for-
grantedness' (p 78) about life as it is lived. This became possible for me as a researcher when I began to challenge the'taken-for-grantedness' about life, which then made it possible for me to participate in and also to see how things worked in and beyond my classroom.
In writing each story what I tell as well as the meaning of what is told through each story has been shaped by the relationship between me and the students through: me as teacher at the school known to students for at least 4 years; having taught some of the students as a general science subject teacher in one of the 4 years; contact with the students outside of the general science and biology classroom on the school grounds and during school excursions; when they came to me for
counselling; our interactions through school structures such as the prefect body and the
representative council of learners. Each story has also been shaped by my agenda as a researcher where through my critical questions biology education was challenged. This provided me with the 'informed' intuition that gave birth to each story that then took on its own life as it wrote 'itself. I was not able to share the stories with the students who had finished schooling and had left the school by the time the stories were written.
I then shared the stories I wrote with my doctoral student cohort. The question asked by the student cohort was the question of voice. Whose story had I written - the student's or mine? Was the story then true and legitimate? As noted by Lincoln and Guba (2000) voice is a multilayered problem - because of the various things voice has come to mean to different researchers. The reality is that what I have to say matters - it is this that gives me as a researcher voice. What I say expresses and (re)presents selected student experiences through my voice - what you read then you read through multiple voices from a particular time and space in our lives (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000).
I used my power as an author to shape the story and the public perception about the worth of the lives of my students - for this I make no apology. As shared by Stake (2000)'It is the researcher who eventually decides what will be in the report or story - the cases 'own' story. What results may be the case's own story but the report will be the researcher's dressing ofthe case's own story ... it is the researcher who ultimately decided on the criteria ofrepresentation , (p 441). The lives of these students need to be known - because these lives are being shaped by biology education. I also
make no apology for recognising and acknowledging that the stories I tell are the 'truth' to fit the need of the moment.
My stories emerged from interviews I conducted with each of the ten students - as solicited by my interest in racism and related oppressions and discriminations. The stories combine a succession of incidents into a unified episode and reflect my attempts at unravelling of and getting some insight into the lives of my students - both in and outside my classroom as both the oppressor and the oppressed (Polkinghome, 1995). Racism and related oppressions and subordinations, the plot and focus of each of my stories, guided my selection from the myriad utterances during our interviews.
My stories then present a 'tightened' and 'ordered' set of student experiences in a meaningful form for me and possibly also for you as the reader. Although my constructions, each story also attempts to be as close as possible to the actual experiences each of the students and does so through being written in the words used by the student in each of the interviews. The story 'title' emerged from what for the student appeared to be herlhis significant challenge - emerging from the challenges of a 'disruptive' biology education.
4.6 THE CONSTRUCTION OF A STORY: A "FACTIONALISATION".
What is a story?Itis a narrative of an unfolding chain of events, a description of a collection of events and happenings put together coherently by somebody in a particular place at a particular moment in time.
For Barone (1995) a critical story, that is the result of co-authoring, is also an artful practice that requires a convincing dialogue between the writer and the reader. Such an artful practice requires honesty, which can be achieved by the author remaining as close as possible to that experience that comes from careful observation and detailing of the events. This can be achieved through
meticulous detailed transcription that then provides thick data from which the story is constructed.
Through this the richness and nuances of meaning in everyday life can be captured. Intelling itself, a story should not venture far from the lived experiences of the reader as part of it being a
convincing dialogue. At the same time a story must not 'tell it all'.Itmust have in carefully
positioned blanks that the reader can begin to fill in with personal meaning. Inthis way the reader is also engaged through the dilemmas the story poses also for the reader. The story then promotes
'polyvocal, conspiratorial conversations between the writer, the protagonist of the story and the reader' (Barone, 2001, p 151)
Stories have been and continue to be categorized as fiction and non-fiction or fact. The binary opposites fact and fiction are close to one another - much closer than scientific rationalism will allow us to acknowledge. In the world of scientific rationalism fictions are akin to falsehoods and facts present the truth without distortion. Itis this notion of fiction and fact that Gough (1994) challenges through recognising the human agency present in these binary opposites. For him fiction is an active form in that it is fashioned by a human agent and fact reveals the outcome of a human action in being a reference to the thing done or that, which actually happened i.e. a testimony to experience. Thus fiction and fact contribute to each other. What is important is to recognise that even the stories of fact or non-fiction have been fashioned through a human agency. It is this that leads to a blurring between fact and fiction and makes clear that there can be no factual narrative without distortion. Richardson (2001) too recognises that fact and fiction participate in a delicate balancing act when one attempts to write a 'true ethnography' of experience. While a story or narrative can never tell the absolute truth it can however achieve a degree of critical significance through the writer remaining as close as possible to the actual experience (Clough, 2002).
Stories that give voice to the previously silenced are political. In giving voice it provides for the diversity of experiences that give readers insights into their own lives and practices. Hence the need for carefully positioned blanks in a story. For Barone (1995) then emancipatory educational
storysharing makes possible a story that allows for a literary experience that is characterized by the construction of the story by the writer and of the reader's deconstruction and reconstruction in the reading of the story. The emancipatory-minded storyteller uses narratives of struggle (hooks, 1994) to focus on the disempowered and for letting the voice of the subaltern be heard.
Barone (1995) rejects the notion that fiction is associated with falsehood. For him a story in putting the experience in the forefront by remaining true to detail meets the requirement for fidelity and trustworthiness and makes it possible to understand how we live our lives. A story is fictional to the extent that it is fashioned by a human yet remains an artful and honest enterprise. 'Factional' then is the way Barone (2001) has chosen to describe the blurring of the boundary between fact and fiction.
This blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction is also acknowledged by Clough (2000) in his recognition that fiction may have a 'privileged access to the real' and that fiction may operate as a 'form of truth'.
Clough (2002), Richardson (2001) and Barone (2001, in his later work) in acknowledging the agency of the human hand in the fashioning of the narrative have opted for the use of the fictional.
I, however, choose to refer to the account in my study as "factionalisations". For me, the sharing of the student's experience and life, the student's "fact", using my skill as a writer in fashioning the student's "fact" blurs that boundary between fact and my fictionalisation of the fact. Itis this that has made possible the factional accounts of student experiences and lives.
In factionalising the students' lives I was able to bring together the multiple methods of a critical ethnography, narrative method and critical storytelling. This factionalisation provided a space through which knowledge could be generated for an understanding ofthe oppressions and
subordinations that are part of the students' lives. For this reason the stories deserve a space in this research.
I read through the transcript of the interview with Waseela many times. The plot was oppression and subordination. This was what I needed to identify in the transcript and present as a logical, tight and ordered factionalistion of Waseela's life. As I read through the transcript I was struck by
Waseela's description of who she was - a thinking person and not a robot (last paragraph of page 5 of transcript).
W: Obviously I'd opt for the one where we are learning - about racism; we are trying to understand it; because if we can go into the other lesson where we not explaining at all, where we not talking about racism - we just being ignorant, we just taking in whatever knowledge - it's like, it's like - okay - we take in the knowledge, we put it into our heads and we take it out again. That's all we are doing - we like robots. Basically, that's what I call it - robots. You can't just take in knowledge and expect to just spit it out - just spit it out; we are human beings, we have feelings - each one of us; I mean we have feelings and we have to think about all these things, we have to think about others feelings and things like that. Surely, we are not - obviously, this is biology - and people think that there's no feeling in it, There's not supposed to be any feeling. But I think there should be feelings and obviously this goes back to understanding.
This was a reflective response from Waseela who was now also looking at how her schooling had prepared her as a robot. She raised this idea of a robot in the interview several times during the interview (see page 8 and page 9 of transcript).Itwas this that gave me the idea of the story title. I then used her thoughts that she had verbalised to write the first paragraph of her story.