with David Schaafsma, Sara Brock, Randi Dickson, and Nick Sousanis
Can stories about students ... more with David Schaafsma, Sara Brock, Randi Dickson, and Nick Sousanis
Can stories about students and classrooms be the basis for meaningful research? In this book, the authors describe--and tell illustrative stories about--the potential and limits of narrative for the purpose of inquiry in English education. They argue that narrative inquiry is uniquely suited to the questions educators are asking in the field today. The text includes guidance for theorizing, defining, conducting, and crafting narrative inquiry. The final chapter is a literary comic!
With Margot Ely, Margaret Anzul, and Maryann Downing.
Written for both new and experienced res... more With Margot Ely, Margaret Anzul, and Maryann Downing.
Written for both new and experienced researchers, this book is about creating research writing that is useful, believable, and interesting. The authors recognize that qualitative reports are inevitably ways of telling stories. Blending rigorous scholarship with a clear, accessible style, they examine the processes, rhetorical devices, and other tools researchers use to create stories that evoke the complexity of the experiences within their studies.
Throughout the book the authors' accounts of their own research writing experiences and those of their colleagues are woven together with the writing and reflections-on-writing of students of qualitative research. The result is a framework of insights that challenges, models, questions, and illustrates the ways in which researchers compose meaning from their research data and present them in meaningful ways for others.
In efforts to reform English education, little attention is given to English teachers' conceptual... more In efforts to reform English education, little attention is given to English teachers' conceptual understanding of their work; the focus instead is on their actions and whether or not those actions lead to effective instruction. With Composing a Teaching Life, Ruth Vinz digs deeper. She refines her ways of remembering and telling and in the process brings meaning to her own twenty-nine years of teaching. She also presents the perspectives of other practitioners--four student teachers, four first-year teachers, and three seasoned teachers--who describe how their knowledge, preparation, and methods of inquiry affect their actions, beliefs, and practice. Her goal is to involve readers in the complexities of teaching and learning so that they will re-search and re-examine their own teaching lives.
Composing a Teaching Life is divided into two sections. Part One covers the ways different representations of teachers as professionals affect their self-identities, major issues in learning to teach, the advantages of reflective inquiry among experienced teachers, and examples of how teachers actualize their beliefs in their practice. In Part Two, teachers offer glimpses into classrooms that serve as vehicles for drawing out, articulating, questioning, and illuminating what's happening at particular schools, making the book ideal for college methods courses and staff development programs.
Gordon, E., & Vinz, R. (2014). Provocation in the company of others: Learning through provisional... more Gordon, E., & Vinz, R. (2014). Provocation in the company of others: Learning through provisional and improvisational spaces. TC Record, Publication pending.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri, Words are a dime a dozen. And we English educator types have plenty of words that obscure the complexities involved in learning and teaching English. How tempting to bring our enthusiasms to prospective teachers through words. New discussions, new connections, a new culture of power, and new words. Perhaps even a reflection of substantive changes in beliefs. Process words. Empowerment words. Ways of knowing words. Uncommonsense words. Words of change fighting against the words of common sense and conformity. A complicated and confusing process for preservice teachers to enter this new discourse. For often the words as well as the beliefs that prospective teachers confront in English education programs may not match the images of teaching and learning that they experienced throughout the years they sat in English classrooms. Yet it's these experiences that provide the roots for their present knowledge, understandings, and values about the purposes of English education and the role of teacher in that process.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri,
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri,
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri,
In an attempt to counter the culture of high-stakes testing and the instrumental coverage of poet... more In an attempt to counter the culture of high-stakes testing and the instrumental coverage of poetry, the authors designed and taught a sustained, intensive poetry course to secondary students. In this article they advocate a deep genre study of poetry for students and teachers and highlight important principles from their work that are applicable in a variety of teaching contexts.
Vinz. R. (2014). Evocations Toward A Committed Life. In D. Schaafsma (ed.). Jane Addams as Educat... more Vinz. R. (2014). Evocations Toward A Committed Life. In D. Schaafsma (ed.). Jane Addams as Educator. Chicago, IL. University of Illinois Press.
Vinz, R. (2011). Longing and learning. In Reilly, M. and Gangi, J. Deepening Literacy Leaning: Ar... more Vinz, R. (2011). Longing and learning. In Reilly, M. and Gangi, J. Deepening Literacy Leaning: Art & Literature Engagement in K-8 Classrooms. NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Vinz, R. (2011). Sit tight: The uneasy alliance between freedom and control in the middle school ... more Vinz, R. (2011). Sit tight: The uneasy alliance between freedom and control in the middle school classroom. In K. Maul, (ed.). Voices from the Middle: Narratives For, By and About the Middle Level Community. Vol. 8 in The Handbook of Research in Middle Level Education Series. NC: Information Age Publishing ,Inc..
Vinz, R. (2008). If We Could Only, What? In Miller and Norris, Narratives of Social Justice Tea... more Vinz, R. (2008). If We Could Only, What? In Miller and Norris, Narratives of Social Justice Teaching: How English Teachers Negotiate Theory and Practice Between Preservice and Inservice Spaces. Series: Counterpoints/Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education . Peter Lang.
Vinz, Ruth (2006). Teachers New To the Profession: Creating Connectedness Amidst The Surprise of ... more Vinz, Ruth (2006). Teachers New To the Profession: Creating Connectedness Amidst The Surprise of Difference. Democracy and Education, 1(3), 6-15.
with David Schaafsma, Sara Brock, Randi Dickson, and Nick Sousanis
Can stories about students ... more with David Schaafsma, Sara Brock, Randi Dickson, and Nick Sousanis
Can stories about students and classrooms be the basis for meaningful research? In this book, the authors describe--and tell illustrative stories about--the potential and limits of narrative for the purpose of inquiry in English education. They argue that narrative inquiry is uniquely suited to the questions educators are asking in the field today. The text includes guidance for theorizing, defining, conducting, and crafting narrative inquiry. The final chapter is a literary comic!
With Margot Ely, Margaret Anzul, and Maryann Downing.
Written for both new and experienced res... more With Margot Ely, Margaret Anzul, and Maryann Downing.
Written for both new and experienced researchers, this book is about creating research writing that is useful, believable, and interesting. The authors recognize that qualitative reports are inevitably ways of telling stories. Blending rigorous scholarship with a clear, accessible style, they examine the processes, rhetorical devices, and other tools researchers use to create stories that evoke the complexity of the experiences within their studies.
Throughout the book the authors' accounts of their own research writing experiences and those of their colleagues are woven together with the writing and reflections-on-writing of students of qualitative research. The result is a framework of insights that challenges, models, questions, and illustrates the ways in which researchers compose meaning from their research data and present them in meaningful ways for others.
In efforts to reform English education, little attention is given to English teachers' conceptual... more In efforts to reform English education, little attention is given to English teachers' conceptual understanding of their work; the focus instead is on their actions and whether or not those actions lead to effective instruction. With Composing a Teaching Life, Ruth Vinz digs deeper. She refines her ways of remembering and telling and in the process brings meaning to her own twenty-nine years of teaching. She also presents the perspectives of other practitioners--four student teachers, four first-year teachers, and three seasoned teachers--who describe how their knowledge, preparation, and methods of inquiry affect their actions, beliefs, and practice. Her goal is to involve readers in the complexities of teaching and learning so that they will re-search and re-examine their own teaching lives.
Composing a Teaching Life is divided into two sections. Part One covers the ways different representations of teachers as professionals affect their self-identities, major issues in learning to teach, the advantages of reflective inquiry among experienced teachers, and examples of how teachers actualize their beliefs in their practice. In Part Two, teachers offer glimpses into classrooms that serve as vehicles for drawing out, articulating, questioning, and illuminating what's happening at particular schools, making the book ideal for college methods courses and staff development programs.
Gordon, E., & Vinz, R. (2014). Provocation in the company of others: Learning through provisional... more Gordon, E., & Vinz, R. (2014). Provocation in the company of others: Learning through provisional and improvisational spaces. TC Record, Publication pending.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri, Words are a dime a dozen. And we English educator types have plenty of words that obscure the complexities involved in learning and teaching English. How tempting to bring our enthusiasms to prospective teachers through words. New discussions, new connections, a new culture of power, and new words. Perhaps even a reflection of substantive changes in beliefs. Process words. Empowerment words. Ways of knowing words. Uncommonsense words. Words of change fighting against the words of common sense and conformity. A complicated and confusing process for preservice teachers to enter this new discourse. For often the words as well as the beliefs that prospective teachers confront in English education programs may not match the images of teaching and learning that they experienced throughout the years they sat in English classrooms. Yet it's these experiences that provide the roots for their present knowledge, understandings, and values about the purposes of English education and the role of teacher in that process.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri,
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri,
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri,
In an attempt to counter the culture of high-stakes testing and the instrumental coverage of poet... more In an attempt to counter the culture of high-stakes testing and the instrumental coverage of poetry, the authors designed and taught a sustained, intensive poetry course to secondary students. In this article they advocate a deep genre study of poetry for students and teachers and highlight important principles from their work that are applicable in a variety of teaching contexts.
Vinz. R. (2014). Evocations Toward A Committed Life. In D. Schaafsma (ed.). Jane Addams as Educat... more Vinz. R. (2014). Evocations Toward A Committed Life. In D. Schaafsma (ed.). Jane Addams as Educator. Chicago, IL. University of Illinois Press.
Vinz, R. (2011). Longing and learning. In Reilly, M. and Gangi, J. Deepening Literacy Leaning: Ar... more Vinz, R. (2011). Longing and learning. In Reilly, M. and Gangi, J. Deepening Literacy Leaning: Art & Literature Engagement in K-8 Classrooms. NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Vinz, R. (2011). Sit tight: The uneasy alliance between freedom and control in the middle school ... more Vinz, R. (2011). Sit tight: The uneasy alliance between freedom and control in the middle school classroom. In K. Maul, (ed.). Voices from the Middle: Narratives For, By and About the Middle Level Community. Vol. 8 in The Handbook of Research in Middle Level Education Series. NC: Information Age Publishing ,Inc..
Vinz, R. (2008). If We Could Only, What? In Miller and Norris, Narratives of Social Justice Tea... more Vinz, R. (2008). If We Could Only, What? In Miller and Norris, Narratives of Social Justice Teaching: How English Teachers Negotiate Theory and Practice Between Preservice and Inservice Spaces. Series: Counterpoints/Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education . Peter Lang.
Vinz, Ruth (2006). Teachers New To the Profession: Creating Connectedness Amidst The Surprise of ... more Vinz, Ruth (2006). Teachers New To the Profession: Creating Connectedness Amidst The Surprise of Difference. Democracy and Education, 1(3), 6-15.
Vinz, R. (2004), Culturally Responsive Teaching. In Eugene Provenzo, Encyclopedia of the Social a... more Vinz, R. (2004), Culturally Responsive Teaching. In Eugene Provenzo, Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. Sage.
Vinz, R. (2000). Cautions against canonizing (An)Other literature. In Mahalingam, R. & McCarthy, ... more Vinz, R. (2000). Cautions against canonizing (An)Other literature. In Mahalingam, R. & McCarthy, C., Multicultural curriculum: New directions for social theory, practice, and policy (127-154). New York: Routledge.
Discourse: Studies in The Cultural Politics of Education, 1995
... East Harlem, 72nd Street, Greenwich or the East Village, the Bronx or Brooklyn with students ... more ... East Harlem, 72nd Street, Greenwich or the East Village, the Bronx or Brooklyn with students like Jamal, Leticia, Shenequa, Keisha, Danielle, Tan ... As James McPherson (1976) writes, the train was an image of promise that "might have been loud and frightening, but its whistle ...
Vinz, R. (1992). In teachers' hands. In J. L. Collins (Ed.), Vital signs, vol. 3 (150-173). Po... more Vinz, R. (1992). In teachers' hands. In J. L. Collins (Ed.), Vital signs, vol. 3 (150-173). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Boynton/Cook.
Vinz, R. & Kirby, D. (1991). Landscapes: Readers encounter texts. In J. L. Collins (Ed.), Vit... more Vinz, R. & Kirby, D. (1991). Landscapes: Readers encounter texts. In J. L. Collins (Ed.), Vital Signs, vol. 2 (97-108). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Boynton/Cook.
Vinz, R. (1991). Learning the landscapes: Regional literature in classrooms. In Writers' Northwes... more Vinz, R. (1991). Learning the landscapes: Regional literature in classrooms. In Writers' Northwest Handbook. Oregon: Media Weavers.
Vinz, R. (1990). Silences. In J. L. Collins (Ed.) Vital signs, vol. 1 (52-59). Portsmouth, NH: ... more Vinz, R. (1990). Silences. In J. L. Collins (Ed.) Vital signs, vol. 1 (52-59). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Boynton/Cook.
Vinz, R. (1986). Thinking through dilemmas. In J. Golub (Ed.), Teaching thinking (107-111). Urb... more Vinz, R. (1986). Thinking through dilemmas. In J. Golub (Ed.), Teaching thinking (107-111). Urbana, Illinois: NCTE Press.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 160.39.73.61 on Fri,
Writing Out of the Unexpected: Narrative Inquiry and the Weight of Small Moments W e want to tell... more Writing Out of the Unexpected: Narrative Inquiry and the Weight of Small Moments W e want to tell you a story. But first, we need to suggest something about the underlife of the story-how we came to the story in the first place, what prompts us to tell it, and why we think storied moments of experience are vantage points for narrative inquiry. As the four of us attempt to articulate how stories work reciprocally as both data and inquiry, we find it difficult to talk about the purposes and uses of narrative inquiry in the abstract. The narrative telling itself becomes a way of understanding the expe-For us, stories are gathering places of meaning that convey the contexts, complexities, and situatedness of experience.
... East Harlem, 72nd Street, Greenwich or the East Village, the Bronx or Brooklyn with students ... more ... East Harlem, 72nd Street, Greenwich or the East Village, the Bronx or Brooklyn with students like Jamal, Leticia, Shenequa, Keisha, Danielle, Tan ... As James McPherson (1976) writes, the train was an image of promise that "might have been loud and frightening, but its whistle ...
teaches doctoral courses that focus on narrative research and post qualitative research practices... more teaches doctoral courses that focus on narrative research and post qualitative research practices, seminars in fictive and poetic imaginaries, and facilitates community-based literacy projects and poetry writing workshops for K-12 teachers and their students. Abstract: "(In)habitings" explores how the death of my father in a Japanese prison in 1945 during World War II and the recent death of my mother entangle in ways that challenge a binary conception of presence and absence as physical proximity or locatedness based on temporal/spatial constructs. The intention of this poetic inquiry is to compose (in)habitings: performative texts of poiesis, in which the data-material (memorabilia, photographs, objects, letters), embodied (sensorium, affects, (re)memberings, animate and inanimate) and multi-contextual (across temporal, spatial, subjective, and social)-are gathered to reorient time, space, and proximities to trace the intensities, contours, and resonances of presence and absence as they modulate to affect love and longing. Conceiving poetic inquiry as a space for exploring, perceiving, and imagining, I present the poetic (art-making rendered in lyrical-figural languages) and simultaneously the inquiry (the research-method) through poems, lyrical narratives, and metaphoric, speculative reveries that converge to explore the poetic, ephemeral, and shimmering data of life/lived worlds where longing-a kind of ache in both method and subject-resides in the spaces of in-between-ness.
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Books by Ruth Vinz
Can stories about students and classrooms be the basis for meaningful research? In this book, the authors describe--and tell illustrative stories about--the potential and limits of narrative for the purpose of inquiry in English education. They argue that narrative inquiry is uniquely suited to the questions educators are asking in the field today. The text includes guidance for theorizing, defining, conducting, and crafting narrative inquiry. The final chapter is a literary comic!
Written for both new and experienced researchers, this book is about creating research writing that is useful, believable, and interesting. The authors recognize that qualitative reports are inevitably ways of telling stories. Blending rigorous scholarship with a clear, accessible style, they examine the processes, rhetorical devices, and other tools researchers use to create stories that evoke the complexity of the experiences within their studies.
Throughout the book the authors' accounts of their own research writing experiences and those of their colleagues are woven together with the writing and reflections-on-writing of students of qualitative research. The result is a framework of insights that challenges, models, questions, and illustrates the ways in which researchers compose meaning from their research data and present them in meaningful ways for others.
Composing a Teaching Life is divided into two sections. Part One covers the ways different representations of teachers as professionals affect their self-identities, major issues in learning to teach, the advantages of reflective inquiry among experienced teachers, and examples of how teachers actualize their beliefs in their practice. In Part Two, teachers offer glimpses into classrooms that serve as vehicles for drawing out, articulating, questioning, and illuminating what's happening at particular schools, making the book ideal for college methods courses and staff development programs.
Articles by Ruth Vinz
Chapters by Ruth Vinz
Can stories about students and classrooms be the basis for meaningful research? In this book, the authors describe--and tell illustrative stories about--the potential and limits of narrative for the purpose of inquiry in English education. They argue that narrative inquiry is uniquely suited to the questions educators are asking in the field today. The text includes guidance for theorizing, defining, conducting, and crafting narrative inquiry. The final chapter is a literary comic!
Written for both new and experienced researchers, this book is about creating research writing that is useful, believable, and interesting. The authors recognize that qualitative reports are inevitably ways of telling stories. Blending rigorous scholarship with a clear, accessible style, they examine the processes, rhetorical devices, and other tools researchers use to create stories that evoke the complexity of the experiences within their studies.
Throughout the book the authors' accounts of their own research writing experiences and those of their colleagues are woven together with the writing and reflections-on-writing of students of qualitative research. The result is a framework of insights that challenges, models, questions, and illustrates the ways in which researchers compose meaning from their research data and present them in meaningful ways for others.
Composing a Teaching Life is divided into two sections. Part One covers the ways different representations of teachers as professionals affect their self-identities, major issues in learning to teach, the advantages of reflective inquiry among experienced teachers, and examples of how teachers actualize their beliefs in their practice. In Part Two, teachers offer glimpses into classrooms that serve as vehicles for drawing out, articulating, questioning, and illuminating what's happening at particular schools, making the book ideal for college methods courses and staff development programs.