“We’re all in an abusive relationship with the health-care system”: Collective memories of transgender health care

Collective memory work allows participants to recall, examine, and analyze their memories and experiences within a broader cultural context to see how their individual experiences link to collective, shared experiences of similar and/or different groups. This study utilized collective memory work to engage six trans participants in an examination of their individual experiences with health care. During a four-hour focus group, participants engaged in this process of discourse analysis and came to collective agreements about the meaning of their stories, the intentions of the author, and the intentions of others in their shared lived experience. In this paper, we will provide a thorough and rich description of the participants’ memories and their collective analysis, which highlights the interconnection between perceptions of oneself and their experiences with the health-care system. Our analysis revealed participants felt they had a toxic relationship with the health-care system. In particular, they discussed how health-care professionals left trans people tremulously asking for services, uncertain if they would receive care, what the quality of the care would be, and whether they would be treated respectfully. When discussing positive health-care experiences, participants highlighted when fears and anxieties were not realized, but all instances reflected some inappropriate actions. The results from this study will contribute to research on trans health care by providing a nuanced understanding of how health-care experiences impact trans communities collectively, as well as the ways in which health practices can be improved.

Collective Memory Work: A Method for Turning Adult Learners’ Work-Life Experiences Into a Rich Collective Knowledge Resource in Higher Education

The aim of this article is to examine collective memory work (CMW) as a method for turning the work-life experiences of adult learners in a part-time master’s program into a collective knowledge resource, thereby strengthening the interplay between theory and practice in the students’ learning processes. CMW is a well-known qualitative research method, but only a limited amount of research has been done on its use in the context of higher education. This article is based on a case study of five CMW workshops executed between 2015 and 2019 as part of the program ‘Master’s in ICT and Learning’ provided by four collaborating Danish universities. The data consist of an educational design, in-class observations, and 103 memories written by students. This study shows how CMW enables students to share and analyze their work-life experiences as a relevant and rich collective knowledge resource, which allows them to discover shared structures between their work-life experiences and strengthen the interplay between theory and practice in their learning. The conclusion is that even though CMW is not designed to be used in an educational setting, the method can be applied with great results to turn students’ work-life experiences into a collective knowledge resource.

The Relationship Between Childhood Experiences and Pre-School Education Teacher’s Choice of Profession

Nowadays teachers preparation context is actual, when government nationwide develops a system of external motivation to choose the profession of pre-school education teacher (paid scholarships, raised salaries, the status of pre-school teachers is equated to the status of a general education teacher). It becomes important to recognize and understand the internal value motives of choosing a pre-school pedagogue’s profession. So that after choosing such studies, they would not doubt their choice, and after graduating, they would join the educational community.In the article is used the collective memory-work method and it is a way to discover the relationship between past events and the present. Past events influence the current experiences of individuals. The profession of pre-school educator often is chosen by those whose learning process has been related to interacting with adults through play. The childhood experiences of teachers allow educational management professionals to learn more about a teacher’s strengths, evaluate them, and utilize them to achieve the goals of the educational organization. During the collective memory-work sessions, the relationship between childhood games and current pedagogical activities became apparent. Teachers tend to realize their childhood games and creative experiences in the current pre-school educational activities. Childhood experiences directly influence the pre-school educator’s choice of educational methods, transfer of values, and the creation of an educational environment.

Posthuman COV-llaboration: Enfleshing Encounters of Connectedness Through Imaging Memory

Caught up in the “COVID moment and distancing-isolation,” the authors came together through a Collective Memory Work initiative to inquire into what solidarity during the COVID moment meant to each of them and collectively assemble understandings about this phenomenon. Critical relationships, methods, and more-than-human relationalities are shared in this article that combined to enliven the collaboration. Grounded in Collective Memory Work and widened by arts-based approaches, the academics reflexively explored critical encounters, probing into how they move(d) in/through work–home spaces during the isolation and uncertainties experienced during the pandemic. This article serves as a methodological unpacking of our arts-based research process that used Zoom discussions, memory writing, individual artmaking, and sharing stories. More-than-human capacities provide a pathway to negotiate trauma, fears, loneliness, and isolation that affectively circulate through the COVID moment.

Collective Teacher-Researcher Inquiry: Localizing School-Based Curriculum Development in Diversified Hong Kong Schooling Contexts

Responding to a recent call for turning a focus on advancing practices in curriculum studies, this paper reports collective memory work that disrupted academics’ hegemonic voices in School-Based Curriculum Development (SBCD) studies and elicited teachers’ stories about their school-based curriculum development (SBCD) practices. With post-colonialism as the theoretical underpinning, we explored how the Western-centric construct of SBCD was recontextualized in various Hong Kong school contexts. Findings revealed teachers’ struggles with hegemonic discourses that constrained their autonomy in SBCD projects to benefit diverse learners, such as the accountability mechanism, linguistic imperialism, Western-centrism, and top-down curriculum decision-making. Situated in the local realities of Hong Kong schooling, teachers’ SBCD projects also illuminate productive, hybrid spaces where new forms of knowledge, identity, and culture come into being.

Teaching as invasion: emotions, boundaries and entanglements

Purpose This paper aims to engage nine women English teachers in exploring their personal memories centered around the perception of their raced, classed and gendered teacher bodies, and led them to conceptualize teaching as invasion. Design/methodology/approach The process of collective memory work (CMW), a qualitative feminist research method, was used to structure collaborative sessions for the nine women English teachers. In these sessions, the group took up the CMW process as the memories were written, read, analyzed and theorized together. Findings The analyses of two memories from our group's work builds understanding of how the use of new materialism and a conceptualization of emotions as social, collective and agentic, can expand the understanding of the teacher bodies and disrupt normalizing narratives of teaching and learning. The post-humanist concept of intra-action leads one to better understand the boundaries in the teacher – student relationships that is built/invaded, and to see the ways materials, humans, emotions and discourses are entangled in the teaching encounters. Originality/value This study demonstrates how sustained and collective research methodologies like CMW can open space for teachers to more fully explore their identities, encounters and relationships. Further, unpacking everyday classroom moments (through the framework of literacy-as-event) can yield deep and critical understanding of how bodies, emotions and non-human objects all become entangled when teaching becomes an act of invasion.