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Teacher retention and continued teacher growth and development have long been critical global issues in education. The recent pandemic crisis and subsequent “great resignation” (Lodewick, 2022) have returned our attention to the need for positive and enriching educational landscapes that promote teacher collaborative reflection, knowledge, and growth in order to sustain teachers in the field. This chapter explores the ongoing teacher learning that has occurred within two knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) in the United States. It begins with an overview of Craig's early work with teachers, during which her conceptualization of knowledge communities emerged. According to Craig, knowledge communities are safe, collaborative spaces that cohere around teachers' intra/inter-school dialogue and their storying/restorying (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996, 1998) of experiences. Additionally, knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) begin with originating events, allow teachers' experiences (Dewey, 1938) to resonate with others in the group, feature reciprocity of members' mindful responses, and promote the development of shared ways of knowing. Equally important, knowledge communities evolve and change, fuel ongoing reflection in community, and bring moral horizons into view. Employing these knowledge community qualities as our lens, we examine the interactions of the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy. The Portfolio Group is a teacher/teacher educator/researcher group formed in 1998 during a US education reform era (Craig, Curtis et al., 2020). Its sister group, the Faculty Academy, is a cross-institutional, cross-discipline higher education group of teacher educators/researchers formed in 2002 (Craig, Turchi et al., 2020). Employing a parallel stories representation (Craig, 1999), exemplars (Mishler, 1990) from both groups show how teacher collaborative groups have the capacity to be safe spaces in which critical professional dialogue, reflective exchanges, and generous scholarship occur among members. Furthermore, they are nurturing spaces in which teachers can thrive and be their best-loved selves (Craig, 2013; Schwab, 1954/1978). These two groups exemplify the ways in which knowledge communities support teacher collaboration, promote ongoing teacher growth and development, and foster teacher sustainability.

This chapter revolves around a Zoom conversation between Tim Martindell and Cheryl Craig to which Chestin T. Auzenne-Curl added field-based evidence and reflective comments. The exchange between Martindell and Craig had to do with how Tim facilitated the Writers in the Schools (WITS) writers in conjunction with Tina and Maryann who led the WITS Collaborative. The embedded snapshots and excerpts stemmed from the field notes we accumulated during the life of the project. The conversation discusses some of the fine points of facilitation as well as the boundary areas where what unfolds fringes on the unknown. Near the end, hope for the future is discussed.

The notion of excessive teacher entitlement arose out of concerns with trying to understand and find a language to describe the paradox of faculty/teachers' intransigence in the face of the flexibility required of them to promote the learning and well-being of all in the institutions they serve. Through unique narratives, the authors trace the parallel paths they negotiated in their challenging curricular journeys, which led them to unmute teachers' voices cached in reform stories. The first author, Tara Ratnam, coined the term “excessive teacher entitlement” to characterize the putative deficit view of teachers that is projected onto them and how the concept of the teachers' “best-loved self,” which the second author, Cheryl Craig, developed, embraces teachers' input and complements “excessive teacher entitlement,” albeit from a different direction and perspective. This introduction also provides a bird's-eye view of the diverse ways and contexts in which leading international authors examine excessive teacher entitlement in the 17 chapters that follow.

This narrative inquiry centers on teachers' longitudinal experiences of policy-related reforms systematically introduced to T. P. Yaeger Middle School, a campus located in the fourth largest, second most diverse city in America. The embedded research study, with roots tracing back to 1997, uses five interpretive tools to capture six mandated changes in the form of a story serial. Special research attention is afforded pay-for-performance, the sixth reform in the series. The deeply lived consequence of receiving bonuses for his teaching performance prompted Daryl Wilson, Yaeger's long-term literacy department chair, to proclaim “data is [G]od.” Wilson's emergent, inventive metaphor aptly portrays the perplexing conditions under which his career ended, and how my long-term research project likewise concluded.

In this chapter, we discuss how an outside writing program was able to assist the stakeholders at a local middle school and the story behind the leaders involved in the process. This program was part of a larger system of “interventions” geared toward improving student success and teacher efficacy. Traditional interventions (after-school tutorials, grouping by state assessment scores, test-taking strategies) were viewed as lacking when it came to their impact on the campus's mostly students of color. Knowing the potential impact of a solid reading and writing program on urban youth, the faculty on the campus teamed with a Writers in the Schools (WITS) writer who proposed several promising practices. The contributions of a professional writer, real-world examples, and ongoing teacher professional development with support contributed to creating a knowledge community of writers that, in addition to creating more scholarship for students and staff, manifested itself in more minority students performing at the highest levels on the state accountability assessments.

Craig and Auzenne-Curl reflect on how their individual experiences and personal practical knowledge developed in context over time contribute to a collective review of the backdrop of the stories of experience shared in this volume. The chapter provides context for the study that inspired the collection and a preview of the chapters yet to come.

This brief history of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) documents developments and trends during the decade 2013–2023. To situate recent ISATT history, we begin with an overview of the association's first 30 years (1983–2012). The dominant theme of those early years was developing ISATT as a recognized and influential professional organization connecting researchers on teaching and teacher education from a growing list of nations and regions of the world. During the most recent decade, there has been a concerted effort toward broad internationalization through biennial conferences and regional meetings, and a growing network of national representatives from across the world. Also, the ISATT journal, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, the journal, which began in 1995, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles written by more than 1000 authors and coauthors, contributing to a growing body of knowledge about teaching and teacher education in many cultures. In the last 20 years and especially in the past 10, the locations of ISATT meetings have become significantly more diverse, following a trend of greater internationalization compared with ISATT's European and North American beginnings. At the same time, the number of ISATT members remains stable and small thereby preserving a collegial and collaborative tone in our exchanges. In sum, ISATT's recent decade finds the association intellectually healthy, successful in managing the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, and enriched by the proliferation of multinational points of view and styles of research.

This chapter addresses a sensitive topic in the field of education: the relationship between and among narrative inquiry, critical analysis, and critical theory. It argues that narrative inquirers are critical – but not in the same way that critical theorists are critical, although they may draw on the same literature and terms. To make our point, we unpack three of our peer-reviewed articles and highlight our theoretical frames and research moves to demonstrate criticality in narrative inquiry. We specifically discuss (1) titles and topics, (2) research frameworks, (3) historical and contemporary data, (4) use of participants' voices (words and feelings), (5) themes, and (6) new knowledge. We mostly argue that narrative inquiry exists because of experience. From experience, everything else unfolds – including criticality – depending on where the researcher in relationship with research participants, takes the inquiry. This chapter explicitly addresses a lived issue known both inside the narrative inquiry community and outside of it.

This research examines the influence of parents on students studying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and entering STEM careers. Participating youths were awarded scholarships from large funded US grant programmes. Cases of two graduate students (one female, one male) and one undergraduate student (male) are featured. The first two students in the convenience sample are biology and physics majors in a STEM teacher education program; the third is enrolled in computer science. National reports emphasizing the importance of parents on their children's education are presented, along with diverse international literature. The use of narrative in STEM curriculum and narrative inquiry in STEM research are also documented. Experience, story, and identity form the study's conceptual frame. The narrative inquiry research method employs broadening, burrowing, and storying and restorying to elucidate the students' academic trajectories. Incidents of circumstantial and planned parent curriculum making surfaced when the data were serially interpreted. Other noteworthy themes included: (1) relationships between (student) learners and (teacher) parents, (2) invitations to inquiry, (3) modes of inquiry, (4) the improbability of certainty, and (5) changed narratives = changed lives. While policy briefs provide sweeping statements about parents' positive effects on their children, narrative inquiries such as this one illuminate parents' inquiry moves within home environments. These actions became retrospectively revealed in their adult children's lived narratives. These small stories, while not generalizable, map how students, shaped by their parents' nurturing, enter the STEM disciplines and STEM-related careers through multiple pathways in addition to the identified pipeline.

This chapter outlines the contents of Preparing Secondary STEM Teachers to Teach in America's Urban Schools. The volume begins with an overview of the teachHOUSTON STEM teacher education program in Chapter 2 and is followed by an account of the collaboration that took place between a Physics professor and a teachHOUSTON Physics teacher educator and its impact on STEM teacher preparation in Chapters 3-4. Chapters 5 and 6 include discussions about formal and informal learning opportunities and include a narrative of a student's experience on how the Noyce Internship Institute contributed to their STEM teacher learning. In Chapters 7–9, readers learn about the influence of parents, teachers, and professors on students' entry into and decision to work in the STEM and/or STEM education field, with an emphasis on those in STEM teacher education. Chapter 10 highlights the value of scholarship grants; Chapter 11 addresses the growth and development of teachHOUSTON, the impact of the scholarships awarded to many of its students and traces where its graduates currently are teaching in order to demonstrate that teachHOUSTON has fulfilled its mission. The final chapter of the book reflects on teachHOUSTON as a secondary urban teacher education program and summarizes significant points that have led to its success.