| The study is a narrative inquiry into how our experiences shift our identities as persons and as teachers. Five teachers---Ken, Dana, Larry, Wendy and myself, Carla, narratively examined how our identities shifted because of the experiences we had through our involvement in a professional development program in Kenya. The study is not about being in Kenya, nor about the amazing Kenyan teachers with whom we had the privilege of working. The purpose of the study is for us to come to understand how our experiences in Kenya, what I am calling the borderlands, have shaped our ever-evolving teacher identities.;Narrative educational research is associated with, among others, the work of D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly (1986, 1988, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2000). Their research understands teacher identities as 'stories to live by,' stories of how we are in our worlds which are created and recreated through the experiences we have (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999). Based on this fundamental position, Connelly and Clandinin advocate that teacher development be one of reconstruction. It is a process of telling and retelling our educative experiences, of composing and recomposing our embodied knowledge, for the purpose of creating meaning of life's experiences. We thereby become confident in the resource that is ourselves as we facilitate the meaning-making process for our students in our classrooms (1999b).;The contributions to the thought and practice of teacher education I hope to make as a result of this study are three-fold. First, I desire to witness the change process narratively. Second, I hope that the attention I give to the identities of the five of us will highlight the need for teacher education programs and development opportunities to include and even esteem teacher identity formation components and emphases. And lastly, I also hope that those reading the study will be encouraged either to begin or to continue to think about how their own 'stories to live by' are shaped by and are shaping their unique life experiences and how it is that these stories are being told and retold, lived and relived, in their classrooms every day. |
