To read this content please select one of the options below:

Chapter Two Burrowing and Broadening in the Storied Place of Teacher Education

Narrative Inquirers in the Midst of Meaning-making: Interpretive Acts of Teacher Educators

ISBN: 978-1-78052-924-0, eISBN: 978-1-78052-925-7

Publication date: 25 July 2012

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate “walking alongside” in the three-dimensional space of narrative inquiry, as explored through the field texts of two teacher educators, one mentoring the other through layered stories of “place.”

Approach – The authors use several interpretive tools to explore the question, “What sustains us as teacher educators?” The dialogue deepens as the authors make their professional knowledge landscapes more visible, bringing sacred stories, stories of gender, stories of hierarchy, stories of power, and stories of race forward, exploring how these stories are held in tension with one another. The authors ponder the questions: what happens when the small stories’ educators living in “place” become so far removed from authorized meta-narratives also underway in “place”? And, how can we remain wakeful to the numerous story constellations of others that revolve around us?

Findings – The analytical spaces described by the researchers helped them to realize and share with others that researchers may more fully respect the vulnerability our research participants feel that comes along with their own restorying. Vulnerability brought forward a common bond found in the experiences of “place” in the field texts. Narrative inquirers who write field texts, then restory their own narratives of place, add to the empirical dimensions of narrative inquiry and its attentiveness to lived experience.

Research implications – This demonstration, through its examples of the three-dimensional space of narrative inquiry, shows how interpretation emanates from the various cracks, corners, and even the air within this important analytical space. Narrative researchers may continue to unpack this space in their work. Narrative inquirers are also reminded that place is storied and that human beings are narratively anchored in place, an important consideration for relational research ethics.

Value – Readers can interact with the tools used by narrative inquirers, in this case, “tracing” and “burrowing and broadening.” Narrative inquirers may also recognize vulnerability as an effect of interpreting within the three-dimensional inquiry space, and understand the necessity of vulnerability as a part of thinking narratively.

Keywords

Citation

Keyes, D. and Craig, C. (2012), "Chapter Two Burrowing and Broadening in the Storied Place of Teacher Education", Chan, E., Keyes, D. and Ross, V. (Ed.) Narrative Inquirers in the Midst of Meaning-making: Interpretive Acts of Teacher Educators (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 16), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 23-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3687(2012)0000016006

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited