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In this paper, we first develop the concepts of authentic leaders, authentic leadership, and authentic leader development. We suggest a definition of authentic leaders, which is based on the leader’s self-concept: his or her self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, self-concordance, and person-role merger, and on the extent to which the leader’s self-concept is expressed in his or her behavior. Following, we offer a life-story approach to the development of authentic leaders. We argue that authentic leadership rests heavily on the self-relevant meanings the leader attaches to his or her life experiences, and these meanings are captured in the leader’s life-story. We suggest that self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, and person-role merger are derived from the life-story. Therefore, the construction of a life-story is a major element in the development of authentic leaders. We further argue that the life-story provides followers with a major source of information on which to base their judgments about the leader’s authenticity. We conclude by drawing some practical implications from this approach and presenting suggestions for further research.

Purpose – This chapter explores the complexity and tensions inherent in the question of how story becomes research with particular attention to the use of narrative research in studying teacher education.

Approach – To do this, we begin each section with a narrative fragment from earlier published research in which we collaborated (Hamilton, 1995). Then, we use narrative research analysis tools to explore the meaning of each fragment, lay that understanding alongside research accounts and wonderings about research in and by teacher educators, and consider the fragment in terms of specific understandings of narrative inquiry as research methodology for studying teacher education.

Findings – This chapter examines when story moves to research while probing the tensions between knowledge and living as teachers, teacher educators, and teacher educator researchers. Using the first fragment, we explore fulfilling roles as a teacher educator by using a narrative analysis tool that teases apart the author's role of narrator, actor, and character. In the second fragment, we consider the contexts that influence a teacher educator researcher by examining the fragment to determine the levels of narrative. In the third fragment, we utilize the tools of plotlines and tensions to unpack the competing plotlines of epistemology (modernist vs. narrative) ending with an examination of the importance of ontology in narrative work. In our fourth fragment, we unpack nine approaches to narrative by examining the essential role of story for each element of the research process.

Research implications – As teacher educator researchers, we always stand in the midst – in the midst of the story where we may be simultaneously narrator, character, and actor, in the midst of living the research we are most interested in studying. Within a single moment, we can act as teacher, teacher educator, and teacher educator researcher when our research focuses on our own practice. Our experience as we live it represents the tension between arrival and arriving.

Value – The value of this chapter is the way in which it demonstrates narrative analysis and distinguishes among various approaches to narrative research.

The authors explore self-identity construction as a mechanism of institution­aliz­ation at the individual level. Building on in-depth analysis of life stories of yoga practitioners who are at different stages of practice, the authors found that as yoga practitioners are more exposed to the yogic institution, yogic meanings gradually infuse their general worldview and self-concept. The authors follow the line of research which focuses on professional identity construction as institutional work, yet, opening the “black box,” the authors argue that institutional meanings take root at the individual level beyond the institutional context and beneath the explicit level of identity.

This chapter investigates how we have come to know what we know, in the United States, about the terms “ability” and “disability” through the story of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. What is the narrative of Helen Keller as told through children’s literature? How might the ways in which her life is presented contribute to stereotypes of what it means to be disabled? What, if any, are the ways in which authors of these books resist writing about her as someone who “overcame” her disabilities? How is Helen Keller’s relationship with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, portrayed and what might this representation contribute to the concepts of dependence and interdependence?

This project provides a sociological analysis of common themes through a content analysis of 20 children’s books on Helen Keller.

The theme of the widely circulating “story of the water pump moment” (when Keller realizes that hand movements signify language) depicts a one-sided relationship of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. This informs the narrative representations of Anne Sullivan Macy as “miracle worker” and Helen Keller as “miracle child.” Another theme is the “complexities of resistance,” which shows how these narratives uphold the stereotype that Helen Keller needed to “overcome” her disabilities while also resisting this notion and showing how she also helped Anne Sullivan Macy.

This demonstrates how widely circulating stories such as those about Helen Keller shape what we know about what it means to be abled or disabled, challenges simplistic binary understandings of the disability experience, and points to the power of narratives to shape systems of beliefs.

Purpose: This chapter proposes narrative allyship across ability as a practice in which nondisabled researchers work with disabled nonresearchers to co-construct a process that centers and acts on the knowledge contained in and expressed by the lived experience of the disabled nonresearchers. This chapter situates narrative allyship across ability in the landscape of other participatory research practices, with a particular focus on oral history as a social justice praxis.

Approach: In order to explore the potential of this practice, the author outlines and reflects on both the methodology of her oral history graduate thesis work, a narrative project with self-advocates with Down syndrome, and includes and analyzes reflections about narrative allyship from a self-advocate with Down syndrome.

Findings: The author proposes three guiding principles for research as narrative allyship across ability, namely that such research further the interests of narrators as the narrators define them, optimize the autonomy of narrators, and tell stories with, instead of about, narrators.

Implications: This chapter suggests the promise of research praxis as a form of allyship: redressing inequality by addressing power, acknowledging expertise in subjugated knowledges, and connecting research practices to desires for social change or political outcomes. The author models methods by which others might include in their research narrative work across ability and demonstrates the particular value of knowledge produced when researchers attend to the lived expertise of those with disabilities. The practice of narrative allyship across ability has the potential to bring a wide range of experiences and modes of expression into the domains of research, history, policy, and culture that would otherwise exclude them.

This chapter features our innovative endeavors to inquire into an African-American student's potentially sensitive stories in a methodologically fluid and ethically delicate manner through two generative methods: digital narrative inquiry and musical narrative inquiry. Through a meta-level “inquiry into inquiry” approach, this work explores how we engaged in the digital and musical restorying of the participant's “Wounded Healer” narrative and uncovered its dynamism, cultural richness, and nuances. We subsequently represented the findings in humanizing ways using multimedia and music. Drawing on the insights from exploring these novel methods of digital and musical inquiry, our work illuminates noteworthy elements of narrative research: generativity, transformativity, interpersonal ethics, aesthetic ethics, and communal ethics. Additionally, the potential issue of trustworthiness in fluid narrative inquiries is addressed.

To explore the digital landscape, narrowing to Instagram, as a cultural space to advance sociological understanding of elite athlete mother identity meanings and lives.

Relativist narrative inquiry is outlined as a theoretical and methodological approach to expand sociological research on motherhood and sport, by exploring big and small stories on social media sites. Elite athlete mother's mediated self-portrayals on Instagram are theorized as identity stories (re)created and made possible, by cultural narrative resources.

An example of big and small story research is outlined from a larger case study of elite athlete figure skating mothers' self-portrayals on Instagram as they negotiated motherhood, and a professional sport career. Thematic narrative analysis findings include a big story plot in the post-partum period: negotiating intensive mothering and career. Two small stories that fed into fluid meanings of this big story plot are also presented: holding the baby close and working mum/new mumtrepeneur. These findings show nuanced contradictions of contemporary motherhood meanings, within sportswomen's personal and public digital stories.

A big and small story approach grounded in narrative inquiry holds value to learn more about the contemporary digital landscape's shaping of the meanings of sportswomen's identities and lives. Future research is recommended using this approach on additional social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) to expand intertextual understanding of elite athlete mother identities in socio-cultural context, tapping into these underexplored naturalistic data resources.