Through the metaphor, "learning to teach in the 'eye of the storm'", a beginning teacher's experiences of teaching in one of America's diverse urban campuses become known. Three themes of global significance emerge: (1) the similarities and differences between professional learning communities and knowledge communities; (2) the morphing of "the…

This article traces the roots of narrative research in the social sciences and education, then centers on "story constellations," a version of narrative inquiry that uncovers teachers' knowledge of school reform in context. A fluid form of investigation that unfolds in a three-dimensional inquiry space, story constellations consists of a flexible…

Written as four scenes that span a five-year period, this article examines the summative evaluation of an organized school reform programme in the United States from the teacher perspective. The study provides fine-grained details of how the evaluation of the particular reform effort went "awry" in the view of some teachers who directly…

Schwab (Schwab, J. J. (1970). "The practical: A language for curriculum." Washington, DC: National Education Association, Center for the Study of Instruction) named the teacher, learner, subject matter, and milieu as the desiderata essential for curriculum making. In our research, the teacher commonplace has formed the entry point of inquiry.…

The field of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices, like a number of other areas of inquiry, appears negligent in paying intellectual debt to Joseph Schwab who revolutionalized the fields of curriculum and teaching in the 1970s with his ideas about the practical. In this article, I trace my personal journey of coming to know…

For the purpose of reflective analysis, this article, which employs narrative inquiry as a research methodology, combines two "crossing the boundaries" dilemmas I experienced over the course of a decade. While the dilemmas relate to different issues that emerged in my career (standardized testing as a K-12 teacher and the formal evaluation of a…

Explains the evolution of the parallel stories methodology of contextualizing teacher knowledge, including substantive, theoretical, and conceptual understandings that arise from the inquiry and the implications the approach holds for teacher education programs. The paper also presents excerpts from a current publication to illustrate the…

This case study follows a teacher who moved from context to context as a preservice teacher, substitute teacher, long-term replacement teacher, and beginning teacher within two contexts. The study illuminates ways that particularities of placements influence what is available for teachers to come to know, what is called good teaching, and who is…

This article distills what teachers at six diverse, urban schools came to know as a consequence of engaging in school portfolio development from a teacher knowledge perspective. Grounded in a narrative method and form, the work highlights the asking of hard questions, the concept of powerful learning, the idea of high quality professional…