|
Article Excerpt
Self-conception is a central notion in transformative professional development (TPD). TPD is an emerging approach to improving the personal and professional lives of practitioners in the serving professions, such as health care workers and teachers. Unlike traditional professional development, where experts impart the technical knowledge necessary to be successful in one's field, TPD assumes participants already possess the knowledge they need. The assumption underlying this approach is that self-knowledge, which one may have lost sight of in the busy-ness and stress of life, is the cornerstone of personal and professional success.
Despite being elusive and intangible, the "inner self" is the primary focus of a TPD program for public school leaders called the Courage to Lead (CTL). From the CTL perspective, there is an essential self within us that needs to be revealed so that we can act and believe in ways that are better aligned with our personal truth. This view of the inner self has been the focus of a wealth of writing from philosophical and religious traditions (e.g., Merton, 1968) and used by investigators studying the value of the Courage retreats for participants (both the CTL retreats for leaders and the Courage to Teach retreats for teachers) (e.g., Intrator & Scribner, 2000). The view employed in this analysis differs from that taken in prior studies of the Courage work in that it takes an agnostic view on the notion of the inner self. Specifically, I treat the idea of the self as a social and discursive construct that can be personally and powerfully experienced in moment-to-moment and more sustained interactions. Following from this view, in this study, I combine insights and methods from ethnography and discourse analysis to examine how a particular kind of self was cultivated through the social practices of the CTL retreats. The focus of this article is not in making an ontological argument. I am not trying to address the question of whether we have a true inner self, which is a hotly contested topic (see Gergen, 1996). I am interested in how the concept of an inner self was communicated through the talk and activities of the retreat. The research question that leads my analysis is this: How did the talk and interactional practices of the program meetings aim to facilitate participants' access to the notion of an inner self?
What Is the CTL?
CTL is one of a set of retreat series provided by the Center for Courage and Renewal whose tagline reads "reconnecting who you are with what you do." According to its Web site (Center for Courage and Renewal, n.d.):
... the Center for Courage and Renewal has helped foster personal and professional renewal through retreats that offer the time and space to reflect on life and work ... this approach was initially created to renew, sustain, and inspire public school teachers* Educators remain at the heart of our mission, but retreats are also offered to those in serving professions such as healthcare, clergy, and law, as well as to anyone yearning to become more wholehearted in their life and work.
Two assumptions of the Center's work are embedded within this description. The first is that the personal and the professional should be connected. The notion that "who you are" and "what you do" should be linked has multiple and tangled roots, including Marx's (1844/2000) discussion of the alienation of the modern worker from his nature, the transcendentalists' emphasis on self-realization through following one's true path (e.g., Thoreau, 1854/2005), and Maslow's (1954) theory of self-actualization. These and other varied spiritual and philosophical traditions (including Quakerism) informed the retreat practices.
A second assumption is that it takes "courage" or daring in the face of difficulty to connect these two aspects of our lives; workplaces and the sites associated with the personal realm such as families, it seems, are not designed to encourage this type of integration. The Center assumes, however, that there are those who are "yearning" to become whole again. The word yearning is revealing of the view of self that is inherent in the Center's work in that it suggests a "deep longing," especially "when tinged with sadness" for a wholeness that one once had but is now lacking (Yearning, 2007).
CTL originates from the writings of Parker J. Palmer, an activist and scholar, who has authored numerous books and articles in the popular and academic presses. One of his most successful books is The Courage to Teach (1998), which argues that "good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher" (p. 10). That one's "soul and role" (Palmer, 2004, p. 11) should be more fully integrated is a key aspect of the retreats offered through the Center.
Conceptual Framework
Examining how the notion of an inner self is reified through the talk and activities of the retreat meetings can illuminate how the program aims to help participants navigate conflicts between "soul and role." I draw on two lines of research to understand how the social practices of the group enabled a discussion about an inner self. The first is research on communities that aim to transform individual's understandings of themselves. The second is research on how talk and interaction provide resources for learning.
Communities That Aim to Transform Understandings of the Self
A wide range of communities aim to transform one's understanding of who one is and how one faces challenges. Some that have been studied from a social practice perspective include Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), Evangelical Christians, and Buddhist monks. I view each of these groups as a community of practice in that they are characterized by mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire (Wenger, 1998). My focus in reviewing these studies is on the shared repertoire, the narratives, interactions with artifacts, and recurring ways of framing problems employed to help members learn how to belong to the group.
Humphreys (2000) found that A.A. provides a number of routine storytelling structures for members to use to reinterpret their life stories in line with a collective recovery narrative, to learn the rules of the group, and to deal with the challenges caused by alcoholism. The most important of these is the "drunk-a-log," which members use to "describe their personal descent into alcoholism and recovery through A.A." (Humphreys, 2000, p. 498). On storytelling in A.A., Cain (1991) emphasizes the role of the community in shaping an individual's experience when she describes how members comment on those aspects of an individual's story that fit the official perspective and ignore those that conflict with the A.A. view of a recovery trajectory. In this way, newcomers learn how to see themselves and their activities in accordance with the group's views. Furthermore, taking on an identity that revolves around drinking (i.e., an "alcoholic" or a "nondrinking alcoholic") allows the members to feel connected to others who share their difficulties and their efforts to improve instead of feeling alone and hopeless.
In her study of an Evangelical Christian community, Luhrmann (2004) also describes how members come to feel part of a larger purpose, but in this case, the connection is with God. She identified the means by which members learn to have an "intimate" relationship with God: cognitive/linguistic, metakinetic, and relational (Luhrmann, 2004, p. 519). Cognitive/linguistic refers to learning specific words, phrases, and concepts used to talk about one's relationship with God (e.g., "to walk with God"). One can learn the meanings of these words by reading the Bible, listening to sermons, and reading manuals on how to pray. These written and oral-didactic resources are important ways to understand how to live life as a Christian. Through the process of what she calls "metakinesis," one learns to sense and respond to "bodily and emotional states" as if they indicated the real presence of God. Since God refers to a being who cannot be seen or touched directly, coming to feel like he is literally "with" you allows for relational learning or the development of a close relationship with Him. Individual prayer and reading the Bible are the main methods for developing fellowship with God. And as Luhrmann points out, though the Bible's text is the same for everyone, every individual brings his or her own experiences to it and thus can establish a personal relationship with God.
Hori's (1994) analysis of the training of Buddhist monks in a Zen monastery differs significantly from the teaching that takes place in A.A. and in the Evangelical Christian community described above. He found that there is less of a reliance on rational teaching and learning methods (e.g., direct instruction) and more use of what he refers to as "Teaching Without Teaching" as a method for attaining spiritual insight. In this approach, the goal is not efficiency in teaching a person to do a task but the "spiritual training of the person" (Hori, 1994, p. 13). He describes how monks are not given specific directions as to how to complete a task but that there are clear expectations as to the end product of a task (e.g., what a meal should taste like and when it needs to be served). Without directions, the monk is forced to rely on himself and his ingenuity. The monk is thus taught, without teaching, how to be "innovative and resourceful" (Hori, 1994, p. 15). Unlike Western educational approaches that emphasize knowing the purpose behind instruction, training in the monastery consisted of ritual practice, rote memorization, and repetition. "Spontaneous insight," Hori argues, "rests on rote learning" in the sense that what has been trained into one's body and consciousness through continual practice becomes a part of one's apparatus for apprehending the world (Hori, 1994, p. 7). Ritual formalism as understood in the Buddhist monastery is thus complementary rather than opposed to spiritual insight.
A.A, Evangelical Christian churches, and Buddhist monasteries employ different methods of teaching and learning to attain their aims. They are similar though in their reliance on rules, routines, and ritualized practices to advance their teleological projects. Through carefully structured practices, particularities of individual experience get subsumed by a more general system of meaning, such as God's will or spiritual enlightenment. This is not to say that individuality is suppressed but rather that individual agency is experienced and understood through the use of a new interpretive framework wherein the...
|
