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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore and make visible narrative thinking as an interpretive act in moving from field texts to research texts.

Approach – The chapter shows a collaborative meaning-making process of three teacher educators/researchers as they inquire into their identities as teacher educators. The chapter is framed around a focus on temporality, one commonplace within the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space and also shows connections with the two other commonplaces of sociality and place.

Findings – The researchers deepen the understanding of identity as situated in a continuity of experience in relation with others. They highlight how stories beget a storied response. They demonstrate that the experiential dimensions of sociality, temporality, and spatiality are interconnected. They find, through thinking narratively, that the relational is critical – both historically and in the present. Relationships shape a sense of self. This relational aspect of their research introduces ethical considerations. It is in honoring the stories they carry and the stories that are given to or shared with them that the possibility exists for shaping a responsive and attentive life.

Research implications – Numerous authors have written about the relational aspects of narrative inquiry as a research methodology. This chapter shows ways in which the relational aspects of narrative inquiry shaped both our inquiry into and our understandings of our identities as teacher educators. These foundational aspects of the relational both in terms of narrative inquiry as a research methodology and in identity inquiry open up many future research possibilities which extend far beyond narrative inquiry into teacher educator identity.

Value – Researchers utilizing a narrative inquiry approach will find a helpful explanation and demonstration of the process of making meaning of field texts by situating them within the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space.

Environments are gendered and environmental issues have impacts on gender. This introduction highlights some current environmental issues from the ecofeminist perspective that characterizes the contributions and summarizes the chapters in the volume that feature the activities of indigenous women in the Columbian Amazon, urban environments in Athens and Rome, workplace environments in Bangladeshi offices, STEM labs in universities in the United States, and homes used for sex work in Punjab. It ends with a suggestion for a queer spiritual ecofeminist approach to environments.

A division of labor that segregates household labor from capitalist employment and that de-values women's work is ubiquitous in our society. This article examines Twin Oaks, a long-standing intentional community that is intensely focused on overcoming the gender-based inequalities they see in U.S. society. Specifically, they have tried to create a comprehensive alternative to capitalist work relations by developing a work system that values equally all forms of labor – from childcare to income-producing types of labor to pregnancy itself. We describe in this article the specific system they have developed for translating all forms of work into ‘labor credits’ on a one hour equals one credit basis and for encouraging men and women to perform work that in the surrounding society is often assigned to the opposite gender. We consider how they have accomplished this in some detail, and in our conclusion, we draw out some of the tensions or downsides this can create as well.

In the introductory chapter to this book, we invited the reader to join us along the banks of the braided rivers of narrative inquiry research. We hoped to convey through that metaphor the interconnections we find among the work of our contributing colleagues. As we conclude this book, we ask the reader to join us as we visit the headwaters and tributaries of this research tradition. Nearly three decades ago, Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin embarked upon a study at Bay Street School (Clandinin, 1986; Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Connelly, Phillion, & He, 2003) to investigate teachers’ personal practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985). Using narrative as both phenomenon and methodology (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Clandinin & Connelly, 1992, 2000; Clandinin, 2008) for this study, their work in the field was integral to the adoption of narrative inquiry as a research methodology in the, then, burgeoning study of teacher knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, 1990, 1999), teacher education (Clandinin, 1991, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 2000), and curriculum studies (Clandinin & Connelly, 2002). In these areas, as well as in others (i.e., Nursing; Chan, 2008; Chan & Schwind, 2006; Lindsay, 2006a, 2006b), this research, which focused on experience, became well-established and expanded.

Populations in the United States and Australia are also becoming increasingly culturally diverse. In the United States, for example, it is projected that between 1990 and 2050, the percentage of the US population of Hispanic origin will be almost triple, growing from 9% to 25% (making them the largest minority group by far) and the percentage Asian population will be more than double, growing from 3% to 8%. During the same period, the percentage of Black population will remain relatively stable increasing only slightly from 12% to 14%; while the percentage of White population will decline sharply from 76% to 53%. Australia has a long history of skill- and humanitarian-based migration policy. This has resulted in a culturally diverse society, especially in parts of the capital cities of the states and territories. This emphasis looks likely to continue in the future, and will continue to change the Australian society as the humanitarian needs change across the world.

Taking an intersectional approach, this chapter makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of mothers’ movements in the context of social welfare cutbacks in Israel. I argue that the political use of the maternal identity provides an important cultural resource to women’s social movements, yet all women cannot access this advantage equally. By adding an intersectional perspective to the literature on women’s movements and media debates, this empirical study shows that the ability of different groups of women to politically mobilize their maternal identity in the news is impacted by their class and racial backgrounds. I focus on Israel as an ambiguous case that reflects both the political relevance of maternal identity as mobilized by different political actors, as well as the intersectional dynamics of marginalization of women’s movements within contentious media debates about austerity policies. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyzed 268 newspaper articles that discuss the Israeli Single Mothers’ Movement, a welfare rights movement of low-income women of color (Mizrahi). I find two competing frames converging across the newspapers analyzed: the first draws on a nationalist discourse of the “mother of the nation” to present a positive image of a heroic “mothers’ movement”; the second draws on racist and sexist images to negatively frame activists as a “Mizrahi movement” of undeserving poor mothers. I show how the contested construction of the Single Mothers’ Movement in the news media is directly connected to hegemonic Israeli discourse on motherhood and ethnicity, and demonstrate how this shapes the movement’s public image and its political and feminist value.

Moral exemplarity is a desirable but complex achievement. The chapter discusses the meaning of moral exemplarity and examines how the self, as a psychological and spiritual centre within a Jungian perspective, contributes to fostering moral commitment.

A narrative study was conducted amongst ten spiritual healers in New Zealand and France. Stories were collected and analysed interpretively to uncover meaningful patterns about spiritual healers’ moral stance and apprehension of the self.

Spiritual healers demonstrated a deep commitment to the self which clearly sustained a commitment to serve or help others. Commitment to the self was articulated around five core values: self-work, self-reflection, humility, self-integrity and love.

The chapter highlights the moral value of inner work. The self, in its archetypal sense, carries as potential an ‘innate morality’ that resonates in the heart and nurtures integrity and authenticity. To commit to the self requires undertaking a long and painful exploration of the psyche and integrating unconscious material into ego-consciousness. The participating spiritual healers, who had committed to their self and were well advanced on their psychological exploration journey, displayed moral qualities akin to exemplarity.

Hunting for jobs is a socially, historically, and institutionally constructed process. Workers must learn how to find jobs and build careers but the ways in which they learn and the tools they have for doing so vary by class, race, gender, and cultural capital. In this paper, we analyze two organizations that teach clients job market behaviors that purportedly enable them to search for work. We argue that job search organizations (JSOs) can reinforce occupational and career inequalities. Focusing on the job market information and skills given to different occupational groups, messages about opportunity and mobility, and resources made available to clients, we show how JSOs prepare people to look for jobs along class-specific lines. These organizations discipline clients’ aspirations and shape their understandings of their occupational competencies and weaknesses. The study highlights the importance of this understudied type of labor market intermediary.

The author examines the experiences of learning about Japanese elementary education from the perspective of a Canadian teacher. She suggests through a year-long study in a Japanese third grade classroom that the teaching practices and philosophies underlying curricular and pedagogical decisions made by teachers are shaped by the culture and society of which schools are part, such that learning about Japanese schooling highlights the influence of social, societal, cultural, linguistic factors outside, as well as inside, school. In line with narrative inquiry research practices, the author also acknowledges her own stance as a certified elementary level teacher who was educated and certified in Canada, in contributing to shaping her analysis of teacher knowledge of her teacher participants. She argues that the process of learning about schooling in a country or culture different from the one in which an individual was educated and learned to teach, involves immersing oneself into the research context to learn about the experience from the perspective an insider. Realization of the extent to which this expansive interweaving of school and society is apparent in many aspects of schooling in Japan, in turn, reinforces the idea that this interconnection may also underlie schooling in other societies as well, such that one's experiences in one's own culture may form the foundation for understanding and interpreting knowledge gained about schooling in another culture or community. The notion of cross-cultural teacher knowledge, then, may be grounded in personal and professional experience of teaching and being taught in one's own culture.