Running head: BOOK ESSAY

Winnie Yamfwa
Book Essay: Children of My Heart
Course ED6821
Instructor: Dr. Evie Plaice
Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick

BOOK ESSAY

This book essay is based on Gabrielles Roys novel, Children of My Heart

which is set in the 1930s. It was published in 1977. In my opinion, as a literary
text, this book has a fairly easy plot that follows a chronological sequence about a
young teachers teaching experiences on the prairies.
I will now give a brief background of the author. Gabrielle Roy is a French
Canadian who was born in 1909 at Saint Bonifice in Manitoba where she spent her
early life and those early memories are said to have shaped her work as a novelist.
She trained to be a teacher and in 1929 got her teaching certification and embarked
on teaching in small local communities in Manitoba. Later on, she left her
teaching job and focused more on travel and writing. The Canadian Encyclopedia
states that, Her experiences between 1929 and 1937 as a teacher in small-town
Manitoba, in places like Waterhen and Saint Boniface, exposed her to the vast
western landscapes and the ethnic mosaic which would generously nourish her
writing. This mosaic translated into, a tale mostly about immigrant children and
their families from countries in Europe such as Russia and, the Ukraine in
Children of My Heart. On a personal note, I find this title very sentimental.
This paper will examine Roys work using the narrative n inquiry approach in
qualitative research in education. This is primarily because in education and
educational research, learners, teachers and researchers are story tellers and
characters in their own and others stories (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, pp. 2).

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I am quick to mention that even though I have elected to focus on narrative inquiry,
there are some other qualitative approaches or methodologies that researchers can
use when looking at the novel and indeed educational research. Autoethnography
is an excellent example which in fact was the subject of one of my journals. A
mixed method is another possibility. Throughout my study of Roy and materials in
this course I have gravitated towards narrative inquiry because it seems to be an
acceptable approach to try and understand and interpret Roys work.
As a result, I have traced a thematic development of my work in terms of
lived experiences and stories in qualitative research. Also from my readings I
learnt that Deweys conceptual framework of experience and life as an act of
education that advocates for analyzing human experiences in groups or
individually makes sense. Clandinin (2006) also offers a methodology of lived
experience using a metaphorical point of view which is a three dimensional inquiry
space.
For the purposes of this essay, the terms narrative inquiry and narrative
research will be used interchangeably. Qualitative research has given much
prominence to the study and interpretation of literature because of its strong ability
to deal with various matters in a society or community which may be historical,
psychological, sociological or political. Needless to say, these are things that also
touch education. On the other hand, Literature is a source of sensory details,

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figurative (Given, 2008, pp. 487) and ethically it offers other viable options of
studying the complexities of human life and relationships in qualitative research.
Furthermore, it is much easier to deal with confidentiality issues in literature than
in a report and one can have a wider audience in literature.
Reading Roys story, she touches on her senses and emotions - happiness,
sadness, melancholy and even freedom. Talking about her mother who had a
broken hip she wrote, The horror I had felt one day at the thought of being
chained for a lifetime to my teachers desk gave me a glimpse of her feeling at the
prospect of never leaving her prisoners lookout at the window (Roy, pp. 44) As
well, there are lots of conversations in the story which help create meaning,
Dialogue is continuous for the characters. Narrative inquiry is interested in
interpreting this dialogue perhaps as social phenomena.
Narratives or stories have been told for a very long time both in writing and
orally. Story telling is important as it tells of human experiences which are often
multilayered and complex. Narratives include human culture and experience and
there is always a great desire to make sense of experience and the world around us.
(Bruner, 1986). Nowadays, according to Given (2008), Methods of inquiry into
lived experiences appear under labels like autobiography, biography,
autoethnography, life history and oral history. (pp. 484) Similarly Chase (2007)
gives us has five approaches for analyzing told stories and these can take any of the

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following routes: an identity approach focusing on how people construct

themselves within institutional, cultural, and discursive context, a sociological
approach focusing on specific aspects of peoples lives (like Roys which seems to
be focused on her work), a narrative ethnographic and autoethnographic approach
and a psychosocial developmental approach.
Narrative inquiry investigates lived experiences and aims at representing those
experiences in a narrative form that provides detail and context about the life.
According to Given (2008), A published novel, a poem or other genre can become
a source of analysis. For instance, a researcher might use a novel by Virginia
Woolf

to investigate the complex phenomenon of human consciousness. (pp.

487).
It is against this background that I look at Roys work which is basically a
work of fiction which however is representative of human experiences in teaching.
She uses her past knowledge and experiences and her style is descriptive.
Throughout the book she uses the first person I for she is narrating the various
activities she was engaged in at school and out of school. Roy gives very vivid
pictures of her interactions with her students as well as their families. Additionally,
in the book she describes many things like the geography and the weather. She
writes: It was early May. It had rained for several days and the fields across

BOOK ESSAY

which Nil was leading me were a sea of mud, with occasional clumps of low,
thorny bushes that caught on my clothing. (pp. 51)
On the other hand, there is on-going discussion and debate as to whether
fiction can actually study critical issues related to teaching. If anything, this should
be the essence of looking at Roys work. What values does she bring to education
through her story? Is there a message for educators in her novel? For instance,
Sconiers and Rosiek (2000) in Barone (2007) looked at a case study about some of
Sconiers teaching experiences using a fictional character. Apparently the goal was
to investigate matters relating to teaching science to non-white students. We can
draw parallels here when we look at Roys story which is about teaching poverty
stricken immigrant children in the 1930s. I also know that many of our immigrant
children struggle with poverty as well as achievement in our schools today.
This brings me to the subject of voice (or voices) in Roys work. Meon (2006)
discusses at length the significance of voice. She is not the only one, other scholars
have said that:
In qualitative research there are voices. This is because they
recognize that the narratives are in part personal stories shaped by
the knowledge of experience, values and the feelings of the person
feeling them. At the same time, they are also collective stories that are

BOOK ESSAY

shaped by addresses and the cultural, historical and institutional

settings in which they occur. (Connelly & Clandinin, Elbaz, Liswich,
2002, 2005, Gudmundsdottir, 2001. Hoel, 1997; as cited in Meon,
2006, pp. 5)
As educators studying a book about a teacher we can appreciate the multi-voice
nature of our teaching environments. Classrooms are multidimensional and complex
presenting a teacher with many challenges. It could be as mundane as having to cope with
routine or as challenging as having to deal with extremely difficult parents or other bigger
social issues. Roy remarks, Young as I was, I saw myself shut up for life in my work as a
teacher, I lost sight of the exciting side of it and thought only of its implacable routine.
(pp. 124). Eventually she accepted a new post and moved. Her situation seems to be more
complicated because she spent some time alone with a student which became a hot topic
in the community. For example, the students father made this comment, Happy in his
way! Is that the song you sing to him when you go off alone with him in the hills all
day! (pp. 143).
From my readings, I learnt about narrative inquiry in professional development
and teacher education. I also learnt about young teachers attrition in the profession
and am wondering whether this is also true of Roy for she left the profession
eventually. Also could it be that young teachers do not want to stay long in small
rural communities for in the book the teacher leaves?

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Among the many things that stand out in Roys novel is that like other fictional
writing, the book is a personal exploration of self and others as well as identity and
power relations. Roy explores community relations at one level and at another
level power relations especially within families and in her school. How does the
male principal relate to the staff? Furthermore, one can examine the various
relationships that she had with her students.
Writers do not write solely for themselves which therefore brings us to
audience. Clandinin argues that, Audience also shapes autobiographical narrative
inquiry. Who the characters are in peoples stories, the plotlines people choose to
tell and the audiences to whom they tell, all influence autobiographical narrative
inquiry (pp.7).
If we talk about the traditional process of narrative inquiry where a
researcher negotiates entry in the field, we see that this is not really applicable to
Roys work, as the work is in another field or if you will; genre. She has a
completely different style. For example, it is not evident if she uses field texts and
in fact the resulting work is a novel and not a research report as would be the case
in traditional qualitative research.
Essentially, because the novel is a literary text, it is rather difficult to
thoroughly apply qualitative research criteria such as validity, generalizability and
validity. It is in view of these criteria that one can say that Roys book is not

BOOK ESSAY

qualitative data in the strict sense of the term or methodology. Atkinson and
Delamont (2006) argue for more analytic rigour saying that Narrative should be
analyzed as a social phenomenonon, not as the vehicle for personal or private
experience (pp. 607).
Furthermore, When one engages in narrative inquiry the process becomes even
more complex, for, as researchers, we become part of the process. The two
narratives of participant and researcher become, in part, a shared narrative
construction and reconstruction through the inquiry (Connelly and Clandinin,
1990, pp. 5). This is not the way the book is constructed. On the contrary, Roy
writes in a genre that allows for subjectivity which can be problematic especially in
view of authenticity but also allows one to look at her characters holistically. Let us
not forget that Roys text is an art form or literature which is being examined
through the narrative inquiry conceptual framework or lens and obviously there are
limitations.
Clearly there is no evidence of researcher and participant in Roys work for as a
matter of fact she was a writer who in real life was more interested in the arts and
writing.
Etherington looks at narrative inquiry as an umbrella rerm that captures
personal and human experience over time, takes account of the relationship
between experience and cultural context. These approaches are underpinned by

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feminist postmodern values concerned with collaboration and reflexivity as ways

of collecting, analyzing and representing peoples stories as told by them, thereby
challenging, traditional and modernist views of truth, reality, knowledge and
personhood. (Etherington, 2004, pp. 75 as cited in Etherington, 2013), To an
extent, Roys work does capture personal experience.
Aside from academia, The point of reading literature is to discover the
deeper significance of culture. And since culture is synonymous with humanity,
as Geertz maintains, literary criticism is a privileged way of doing
anthropology. When you read literature, you are learning something
more important about what it means to be human. (van Oort, 2004, pp. 622)
Roys story provides opportunity to characters and readers to learn and grow.
In designing narrative inquiries, there has to be personal, practical and
social justification. (Clandinin, 2006). Personal justification entails justifying the
inquiry due to personal contexts whilst practical refers to an inquiry that may bring
about change in practice. Social justification may be in social action and policy.
Roys work, does not seem to have preoccupation with these matters. Instead it is
more nostalgic and personal. She writes:
I still remember how overwhelmed I was just from all directions they
were converging on me, an outsider to them after all. To this day Im still
astonished and touched to think that people should entrust to a total stanger

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fresh from Normal School as I was then the most delicate, the newest,
and the easiest thing to break in this whole world. (pp. 81).
Narrative unity is also vital. As Meon (2006) states, classrooms capture both the
complexity and multivoicedness of teaching narratives retain all the
characteristics of the whole and they occur in an integrated and living part of the
whole (pp. 9). In essence, narratives are created within familiar social contexts
and can therefore be understood or related to by people especially with similar
experiences. This brings together theory and practice in education.
Finally despite some limitations we learn that the advantage of studying
literature in qualitative research, is the assertion that Givens (2008) gives. This is,
it offers researchers a variety of approaches for explaining what and how
participants understand and for representing their insights. The three main areas
where literature is used as qualitative research are representation of data,
participant response and data. (pp. 486).
Narrative research or inquiry is therefore a powerful framework that provides
us as educators to investigate or explore human experiences of the world through
what is provided in stories. It helps us study teaching and learning. Roy wrote an
interesting book which deals with her everyday teaching experiences. Using the
narrative inquiry or narrative research approach to study Roys work leaves me
with an impression that indeed our lived experiences play a vital role in both our

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professional and personal lives. At the same time, I am fully aware that from the
time I started studying the book, I have been inclined to think that it does not
completely fall under narrative inquiry but can still give some insights to
researchers. One thing Roy does well is to share her lived experiences and as this
paper has strived to show; those experiences turned into stories matter a lot.

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References

Atkinson, P., & Delamont, S. (2006). Rescuing narrative from qualitative research, Narrative
Inquiry, 15(1), 164-172
Barone, T. (2007). A return to the good standard? Questioning the future of narrative
construction as educational research
Bruner, J. S., & Austin, G. A. (1986). A study of thinking. Transaction Publishers.
Chase, S. E. (2007). Multiple lenses, approaches, voices. Collecting and interpreting qualitative
materials, 57(3), 651-679.
Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry: A methodology for studying lived
experience. Research studies in music education, 27(1), 44-54.
Clandinin, D. J., & Huber, J. (in press). Narrative inquiry. In B. McGaw, E. Baker, & P.
P. Peterson (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd ed.). New York: Elsevier
Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative
inquiry. Educational researcher, 19(5), 2-14.
Etherington, K. (2013). Narrative approaches to case studies. Last accessed, 30.
Given, L. M. (Ed.). (2008). The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. Sage
Publications.
Roy, G. (1977). Children of My Heart. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc.
The Canadian Encyclopedia,
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/gabrielle-roy/
Van Oort, R. (2004). The critic as ethnographer. New Literary History, 35(4), 621-661.

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