| Connelly and Clandinin (1992) provide the research foundation for defining curriculum as the course of one's life, a definition that stands in stark contrast to the standard definition of curriculum as a course of study or training at a school or university. Their work emerged from Dewey's (1938) expression of the organic connection between education and personal experience, defining life experience as education that is constantly under reconstruction. Schwab (1954) asserted that theories of knowledge must be massively supplemented by life experience, while Schein's (1983) work revealing the reflection-in-action approach to learning and teaching demonstrated that the teacher's personal-practical experience turned narrative knowledge serves as a powerful teaching complement to his/her professional knowledge.;This narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, 2000), uses Dewey's (1938) continuum of experience to develop and discover physician-patient-teacher-student-mother narratives that are situated in varied places on the educational, professional and social landscapes. Through the multi-storied process (Olson, 2000), knowledge communities will be illuminated (Craig, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004), and enlightened "knowing" will be uncovered with the promise of promoting more compassionate teaching and of eliciting more empathic practices on the part of physicians and students. In keeping with Dewey's (1929) belief that "all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race," voice in the social consciousness of the medical profession continues to emerge as a powerful healing force in the process of human[e] change.;This work adopts these theories of curriculum and experience as a framework and superimposes the physician-teacher-patient-student-mother model to develop a curriculum in which the physician's personal knowledge and history, as well as professional knowledge and background, become a part of the curriculum in much the same way that a patient's story and personal history are part of the disease (Charon, 2006). If I as a physician come to better know myself through revealing myself more humanely to my students and my patients, I can, through modeling and invitation, embolden the students and the patients themselves to connect, feel, emote, share and relate---in essence to become more "present" and empathic, thereby embodying the life-giving and life sustaining curriculum itself. The impact of reclaiming the "half-life" of education (Aoki, 1989), and learning or re-learning how to allow the expression of my humanity as a physician and teacher to manifest itself in the classroom and clinic ultimately re-defines the physician-teacher role as one of curriculum-maker and not merely one of curriculum implementer of others' prescriptions. |
