Bringing memory forward: a method for engaging teachers in reflective practice on narrative and memory

The article discusses a method of reflective practice (’bringing memory forward’) developed through a study conducted in a Canadian school during the 2002–03 school year with 18 kindergarten to Grade 12 practicing teachers. The study investigated how teachers could voluntarily recognize their constructions of ‘difference’ against their own ‘landscapes of learning.’ The study combined monthly teacher literature circles, interviews and the writing of a literacy autobiography to link narrative with memory within a framework focused on reflective practice. The presence of these three elements created mutually supportive critical contexts in which teachers reflected on their learning against the background of their teacher practice and literary and lived experience. In the article, the author uses one teacher’s learning to show a process through which memory, narrative and constructions of ‘difference’ became intertextually linked, and how that linking became a place from which critical teacher reflection began.