Recovering and Reconstruing Teachers' Stories

Abstract

In this article the romantic science of stories is contrasted with the natural science method and reconstrued as a means of promoting the personal and professional development of teachers. Each of us as a teacher is seen as constructing the meaning of our lives and of our teaching stories. If our behavior is largely controlled by these interpretations of events, and if reality is constituted by our internal narratives, language and its production can afford us access to them. By showing what is and by trying possible alternatives, the writing and reading of self-narratives may help us as teachers to alter what we do. Prompts to awareness and ways of recovering these aspects of submerged consciousness include autobiography, biography, novels, diary (journal, memoir, and log), letters, interviews, oral testimony and images, time lines or psychobiographies, and Kellian approaches