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Abstract

The most effective teachers are reflective teachers. Reflective teachers are curious about their pedagogy and their impact on student learning and often seek out opportunities to formalize their reflective process and share their stories about their teaching practices. Teachers’ knowledge is founded in their stories of experience (Ciuffetelli et al., 2011). The author positions themselves as the researcher in this autoethnographic narrative inquiry, or self-study. As the researcher, they use the narrative inquiry methodology to study themselves and explore the learning process of using storytelling in their Social Studies methods course in a Teacher Education program while exploring the research question, “How can Journey Boxes be used as a storytelling inquiry that uses primary sources to explore one’s family story and familial identities while gaining an understanding of historical thinking?” As the subject of the article, the author shares their use of The Journey Box as a storytelling inquiry in the Social Studies methods course. The author discusses The Journey Box learning experience in depth while incorporating personal reflections and learnings throughout the process. The data collection process included the collection of personal journal entries of the metacognition processes from the researcher’s teaching and from dialogue with critical friends in Teacher Education. Results include the value of modeling and the benefit of using storytelling inquiry to explore historical thinking and current social issues facing preservice and in-service teachers today.

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