| This study documents the trials and triumphs of a second language teacher as she attempts to write a curriculum for Persian students in a post-September 11, 2001, American school context while nurturing their cultural identities whose roots trace back to a Middle Eastern society. At the same time, it chronicles my journey to connect my bi-ethnic children with their inherited culture. After describing the context where the study takes place, a thorough review of the literature is presented. The literature starts with an overview of curriculum, moves on to multiculturalism and ends with narrative knowing in context. The methodology used in this qualitative research is narrative inquiry, a study of people's stories of experience, where story serves as both method and form (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990). When an event happens, one story can shed light on a single point of view, but the researcher tries to understand the story in light of its context and its many possible renderings in order to give a more illuminative account of the event. The stories contained in this dissertation are situated in a cultural center that undergoes enormous transformations as world events become mirrored after the 9/11 tragedies. This study highlights the dynamic interplay of multiple ongoing, experiential narratives that are continually reconstructed over time through interactive situations (Olson & Craig, 2001). In the end, cultural commonplaces are formed that spur generative knowledge developments. |
