Narrative Inquiry Invites Professional Development: Educators Claim the Creative Space of Praxis

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current educational context calls for evidence-based, measurable student-learning outcomes. Professional-development initiatives are increasingly designed to ensure these outcomes are achieved. Thus, opportunities for teachers to create, adapt, and discern within the act of teaching are closed off. Teachers' praxis is at stake with less and less felt agency in classrooms. The authors explore how narrative inquiry can become a medium for professional development, creating the needed room in which teacher agency is explored individually and collectively through gaining access to the vital role of otherness. They conclude that narrative inquiry invites participating educators to claim the creative space of praxis in their classrooms and fosters a culture of professional learning across participants seen as the formative work necessary within professional development. Keywords: narrative inquirypraxisprofessional developmentcreativity