In the final chapter of this volume, the authors refer to the “pedagogical vantage points offered by narrative inquiry”, an apt comment that encapsulates the volume’s purpose and its spirit. As an increasing number of people throughout the world – and from a broad range of disciplines – are turning to narrative as a research methodology, this volume is timely in its focus on the learning and teaching of this approach. The contributors to the volume, all narrative scholars themselves, write about the creative and challenging pedagogical activities that they use in order to enable others to learn about and do narrative research. The volume will be of particular interest to those teaching narrative research methodologies at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in the social sciences, medical sciences and the humanities. The contributions from Hong Kong, Israel, Europe and North America, all reflect critically on the rich complexities of using and teaching narrative in those contexts and attend closely to the diverse constituencies of their learning communities.

A collection of personal, contextualized stories of teachers assessing their own experiences in gaining expertise as language teachers. Preservice and inservice teachers will benefit from the insights provided in this book, as will Language Teacher Educators and education researchers.

This book brings together contributions from various researchers, providing an overview of narrative research approaches and demonstrating how these work in practice. A broad range of approaches are covered, from well-established and well-known thematic analysis (particularly of 'big stories'), to the more recent sociolinguistic discourse analysis of 'small stories', and the innovative analysis and presentation of visual and performance data such as drawings and drama. This overview includes not just an illustration of narrative research, but the methodological processes which underpin it, relating these to relevant narrative theory. The book, therefore, is both a how-to-do narrative research text and a presentation of narrative studies, providing case study examples and ideas for further research.

What role does narrative play in building teachers' knowledge? In this timely volume, foremost scholars in the field of education not only open, but they deepen the conversation about the uses of narrative in the construction of teachers' knowledge.

Narrative Inquiry in Language Teaching and Learning Research provides an entry-level introduction to research methods using stories, as data or as a means of presenting findings, that is grounded in published empirical research within the field of language teaching and learning. It discusses basic definitions and concepts in narrative inquiry, explains how and why narrative methods have been used in language teaching and learning research, and outlines the different approaches and topics covered by this research. It also examines the different ways of eliciting, analyzing, and presenting narrative inquiry data.Narrative inquiry offers exciting prospects for language teaching and learning research and this book is the first focused and practical guide for readers who are interested in understanding or carrying out narrative studies.

In a climate of increasing emphasis on testing, measurable outcomes, competition and efficiency, the real lives of children and their teachers are often neglected or are too messy and intricate to legislate and quantify. As such, curricula are designed without including the very people that compose the identities of schools. Here Clandinin takes issue with this tendency, bringing together a collection of narratives from seven writers who spent a year in an urban school, exploring the experiences and contributions of children, families, teachers and administrators. These stories show us an alternative way of attending to what counts in schools, shifting away from the school as a business model towards an idea of schools as places to engage citizenship and to attend to the wholeness of people’s lives. Articulating the complex ethical dilemmas and issues that face people and schools every day, this fascinating study puts school life under the microscope raises new questions about who and what education is for.

There has been a major ‘turn’ towards narrative, biographical and life history approaches in the academy over the last 30 years. What are some of the new directions in narrative research? How do narrative research approaches help us to understand the world differently? What do we learn by listening to stories and narratives? How do narratives extend our understanding that other research approaches do not? This collection of work grows from a symposium organised to explore new directions in narrative research. What emerges is a fascinating, innovative and generative series of essays, generally exploring narrative enquiry and more specifically themes of culture and context, identity, teacher education and methodology. This book will be useful for students and researchers using narrative and biographical methods in a range of disciplines, including education, sociology, cultural and development studies.