Pam Steeves

Narrative Inquiry as Pedagogy in Education: The Extraordinary Potential of Living, Telling, Retelling, and Reliving Stories of Experience

In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or—knowingly or unknowingly—in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaningless. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives. (Okri, 1997, as cited in King, 2003, p. 153)

Literature Review on Induction and Mentoring Related to Early Career Teacher Attrition and Retention

Early career teacher attrition is a matter of economic, social, and educational concern in many countries. Usually induction programs, including mentoring, are seen to alleviate the problem of early career teacher attrition. Mentoring/induction programs as a solution to what is defined as the problem of early career teacher attrition and retention is the focus for this literature review to determine the current research base that supports such programs and initiatives. Concerns were raised that perhaps induction and mentoring had become the acceptable or taken-for-granted solution to the problem of early career teacher attrition and retention without sufficient attention to the research base. In this article, the literature is summarized, concerns are raised, and new research directions are highlighted.

Early career teacher attrition: intentions of teachers beginning

Early career teacher attrition has most often been conceptualized as either a problem associated with individual factors (e.g. burnout) or a problem associated with contextual factors (e.g. support and salary). This study considered early career teacher attrition as an identity making process that involves a complex negotiation between individual and contextual factors. Forty second- and third-year teachers in rural, urban, and suburban boards across Alberta, Canada, who taught at different grade levels, were interviewed about their experiences with attention to their future intentions. The semi-structured interviews were analyzed in two ways: simple descriptive statistics on demographic data and thematic analysis of the interviews. The seven themes, developed inductively, were: (1) support; (2) an identity thread of belonging; (3) tensions around contracts; (4) new teachers will do anything; (5) balancing composing a life: Working hours; (6) the struggle to not allow teaching to consume them; and (7) can I keep doing this? Is this teaching? The results of the study prompted questions about how beginning teachers might be sustained by considering each person’s storied life, as well as about how teachers might be sustained on both their personal and professional knowledge landscapes.

Becoming a narrative inquirer: Learning to attend within the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space

Our teaching of narrative inquiry, shaped by a conceptualization of narrative inquiry grounded in a Deweyan theory of experience, works from a view of experience as embodied, always in motion, and shaped and reshaped by continuous interaction among personal, social, institutional and cultural environments. Given this experiential grounding, narrative inquiry is much more than telling or analyzing stories. Our focus is on learning to think narratively, that is, on learning to think with stories. Learning to think with stories highlights the relational, multiperspectival processes in which participants and narrative inquirers inquire into their lived and told stories attentive to the dimensions of temporality, sociality and place and with a focus on retelling and reliving lived and told stories in more thoughtful and responsive ways in the future. Through a series of storied moments, we show ways in which we intentionally create small responsive communities of sustained conversation enabling students to tell aspects of their lives through engaging in diverse narrative inquiry activities. We then illuminate the transformational power of response as lives meet within the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space and each teller is supported in retelling his/her stories in more attentive ways. As students learn to attend to their experiences in narrative ways each teller awakens to new ways of knowing and becoming a narrative inquirer.

Imagining and Playfulness in Narrative Inquiry.

Our personal and professional lives draw us to a shared interest in ‘identity’ and ‘relationships’, and our understanding is shaped by our lives as narrative inquirers. As we struggle to name this complexity we begin to play with metaphors; the metaphor of ‘kites’, and thus string, kite and kite flyer provide us with a way to think about imagining and playfulness in relationships and in narrative inquiry. As we play with these metaphors we see how much our understanding of relationships shape our being and engagement with others and that imagination is inextricably intertwined within our lives and our relationships. By attending to this playfulness, our spaces of knowing enlarge and spaces of possibility are never ending; yet embedded in these possibilities is also a recognition of how difficult it is to stay in relation, to remain wakeful to the tensions and boulders of the landscapes and stories we live within.

Sliding Doors—Opening Our World

In this article I share stories I have lived alongside my son, Matthew, who is challenged by multiple disabilities, particularly in the domain of expressive speech. Narrative inquiry shaped a space to attend and inquire into stories. The stories reveal the tension between an identity given and an identity continually created in relationship. Specifically the stories show that the “fix and serve” tradition in the education of children with disabilities can blank out attention to identity formation and agency of persons with disabilities who are making their way in the world as we all do. The stories offer consideration of the significance of imaginative relational play and improvisation for shaping participatory spaces from which evolving identities are continually created. I narrate stories, configured from my perspective as Matthews mother, and I imagine ways to reshape ever more responsive educative landscapes for people with disabilities and for those in relation to them.

Teacher Education: A Question of Sustaining Teachers

In many places around the world, early career teacher attrition is a major concern. The costs associated with teachers leaving within their first 5 years of teaching are significant in economic terms. However, there are also concerns that the rapid movement of beginning teachers in and out of teaching creates less educative school and classroom environments and, consequently, less ideal learning conditions for students. Another significant concern is the impact on the identities of early career teachers who leave teaching.

Social justice practice: A narrative inquiry perspective:

Narrative inquiry is both phenomenon and methodology for understanding experience. In this article, we further develop our understandings of narrative inquiry as a practice of social justice. In particular, we explore ways in which social justice issues can be re-framed and re-imagined, with attention to consequent action. Drawing on work alongside Kevlar, a youth who left school early, we explore our understandings. Being grounded in pragmatism and emphasizing relational understanding of experience situate narrative inquiry and call us to think narratively with stories. This allows for movement away from dominant narratives and toward openings to imagine otherwise in dynamic and interactive ways.