Connections on the professional knowledge landscape: A narrative inquiry into the experience of a beginning teacher, her administrator and a teacher-researche

This is a narrative study of the experience of a beginning teacher and her administrator during her first four years of teaching. The study is set within the context of the professional lives of three women, the new teacher, the principal and the teacher/researcher who occupy different positions on the professional knowledge landscape. It focusses, in retrospect, on the new teacher's entry to the teaching profession. Within this context, we have worked collaboratively across two particular school settings to explore the nature and meaning of this experience, highlighting the role of the principal in the growth and development of the novice teacher. The inquiry has explored, from three perspectives, the ways in which our lives connected and shaped each other's during the new teacher's first years in the profession. While keeping the experience of the new teacher central to the inquiry, the professional knowledge contexts of all triad members have emerged through the research process.;The study is composed of interacting levels of narrative accounts which appear in various literary forms, stories, poems, letters, memos, dialogues and reflections reflecting the language of school communication. This collection of school stories forms the heart of the thesis. As the teacher/researcher I draw from these reconstructed stories and accounts of experience and describe how, through the research process, both the new teacher and the administrator came to new understandings about beginnings in teaching. I illustrate how stories of expectation, cover stories and stories of ownership reveal insights into the qualitatively different professional knowledge landscapes of the participants. Through the research process we engaged in conversations of practice which bridged these landscapes and enhanced our understanding of the multiple contexts of teaching and administration. The study points to the importance of collaborative research as professional development, as a place for professional dialogue and reflection. Further, this narrative inquiry highlights the importance of story as a viable mode of knowing in teacher development research. By reconstructing, contextualizing and analyzing our teacher stories, this study has evoked credible images of the lived experience of school people.