Characterizing the human experience of reform in an urban middle-school context

This narrative inquiry portrays the human experience of change by way of a situated account of a reform event. Three conceptualizations ground storied the analysis: the metaphor of the 'professional knowledge landscape' of schools; the 'narrative authority' of teacher knowledge; and the notion that teachers have knowledge communities with whom they make sense of their teaching experiences. The paper shows how past and present forces conspired together in perplexing ways to shape the contours of what the teachers--and the researcher--came to know of the reform event.