Methods of a Narrative Inquirist: Storying the Endured Teacher Identity

Authors

Taylor Norman, Georgia Southern UniversityFollow

Abstract

While I was a young English language arts teacher, my teacher identity matured in a nurturing environment cultivated by my veteran colleagues. Finding that this is not the common narrative told by beginning teachers (Alsup, 2019, 2006; Danielewicz, 2001), I wondered what impact sharing the stories of my veteran colleagues could have on young teachers. The purpose of this paper is to explain why narrative inquiry fit the parameters of this particular inquiry, what methods were utilized and how the project was constructed. Like Spector-Mersel (2011), I intend to describe my use of narrative inquiry to expand its conceptual and methodological definitions.

Keywords

Narrative Inquiry, Teacher Identity, Qualitative Methodology

Author Bio(s)

After a four-year career as a rural high school English teacher, Dr. Taylor Norman attended Purdue University for her graduate degrees in English Education. With a background in English language arts pedagogy, Dr. Norman's research stories the identities and practices of inservice English language arts teachers. By using narratives of experiences from the classroom, either about teacher identity or pedagogical practice, Dr. Norman's research builds bridges by highlighting stories of theory and practice. Dr. Norman has presented her research on English teacher identities and pedagogical practices at national conferences such as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and American Educational Research Association (AERA). Currently, Dr. Norman is an Assistant Professor of English language arts education at Georgia Southern University. Please direct correspondence to tnorman@georgiasouthern.edu.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my dissertation committee--Drs. Janet Alsup, Joann Phillion, Judy Lysaker, and Jake Burdick. The story of this research began with all your wise advice.

Publication Date

11-12-2020

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2020.4320

Recommended APA Citation

Norman, T. (2020). Methods of a Narrative Inquirist: Storying the Endured Teacher Identity. The Qualitative Report, 25(11), 3962-3975. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2020.4320