Narrative Inquiry in Practice: Advancing the Knowledge of Teaching

This unique collection of exemplars explores narrative as a powerful means of inquiry, while also examining its possible limitations. Drawing on the experiences of teachers and teacher educators in a variety of settings who have been researching their own teaching, this book:

• Outlines a conceptual framework for considering narrative as a mode of inquiry, including narrative practices that teachers and researchers can try in their own settings.
• Provides detailed descriptions of exemplars, revealing the contexts in which they were developed, an assessment of how they work, and why they may be problematic.
• Uncovers how narrative as a mode of inquiry provides a method for investigating, documenting, and representing a scholarship of teaching.
• Advances the ongoing debates about the role of teachers in inquiring into their own practice, engaging in action research, and building a new epistemology of practice.

Nona Lyons is a visiting research scholar at University College Cork in Ireland, and Vicki Kubler LaBoskey is a professor of education at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she co-directs the Teachers for Tomorrow’s Schools Credential Program.