Teachers' Narrative Inquiry as Professional Development

This innovative volume is a collection of highly personal, contextualized stories of teachers inquiring into their own experiences as learners of language teaching. As such, their stories of inquiry represent the journey of how they know as well as what they know. The intent of this collection is to bring teachers "ways of knowing" into our professional conversations so as to transform our understandings of language teachers and language teaching. By making teachers’ ways of knowing public, open to review by others, and accessible to others in this profession, the editors hope to validate language teachers’ ways of knowing and the activity of language teaching in ways afforded to other forms of scholarly work. The editors encourage readers to look for multiple interpretations and multiple layers of meaning in these stories, and in doing so, hope to change our collective perceptions of what counts as knowledge, who is considered knowledgeable, and what counts as professional development in language teacher education. Preservice and inservice teachers will benefit from the insights provided in this book, as will Language Teacher Educators and education researchers.