"Chew and pour learning strategy": A co-participant's account in a collaborative narrative research to examine learning challenges

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education, University of Regina. x, 261 p. This collaborative narrative research study explores the experiences of three co-participants who studied at different locations in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The three co-participants include myself, researcher and two of my former junior high school students. I purposively selected my co-participants. The sample comprised of Boateng and Ntim who were students at two of the three respective junior high schools in which I taught. Drawing on two theoretical frameworks, critical-constructivism (Kincheloe, 2005), and language and symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1971; 1990), this study explores stories shared by the co-participants to identify learning challenges and successes over the use of English and Indigenous languages in school. I employed collaborative narrative research as the methodology for this study. To collect the data, I designed a set of semi-structured interview questions (Creswell & Guetterman, 2019) to guide the story narration process. One of the goals of this study is how to influence policymakers to direct their attention to solving challenges associated with current linguistic practices in schools. All three of us recounted memorable stories from our early years of schooling to the post-secondary level. My co-participants reflected on struggles they went through with language of instruction, how their life choices were affected by English, and how accessible public spaces are at places where English speaking is required. The study reveals that co-constructing stories with learners offers teachers opportunity to understand the experiences of their students, both former and present. The study found the enormous benefits of local language instruction and communication inside and outside of the classroom. All three co-participants expressed our challenges of navigating the school environment under the implementation of English-only speaking in our respective schools. Therefore, I recommend that to better understand our students’ needs, teachers should practice co-sharing of experiences with their students. I also recommend to policymakers to, as a matter of necessity, implement bilingualism (local language and English) in school to facilitate effective teaching and learning.