ABSTRACT

This book explores the reflective potentialities offered by analyses of teachers’ professional learning narratives. The book has a specific focus on narratives on professional learning and professional identities emerging from different contexts and gives a deeper understanding of successful teachers’ narratives globally.

Diverging from universally standardized constructions of idealized teacher identity and professional learning, the book provides analyses of a diversified set of cases with detailed descriptions of each teacher’s idiographic and professional context to gain a deeper understanding of situated professional identities. With contributions from a range of international backgrounds, it shows teachers of various age groups, subject areas and curricula contribute their narratives to help readers reflect on different trajectories toward becoming a teacher. These narratives provide insight into and a deeper understanding of the conditions and complex processes that being a "successful" teacher involves within these case studies, providing a useful contribution to the field of teacher education.

Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching: International Narratives of Successful Teachers will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and post-graduate students of teacher education and international and comparative education.

chapter |19 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|16 pages

Remaining a student of teaching forever

Critical reflexive insights from a lifetime of multiple teacher identities in the Republic of Ireland

chapter 2|18 pages

From success/failure binaries to teaching for justice

Conceptualizing education as access, responsibility, dignity, and transparency

chapter 4|17 pages

“If I can do it at this school, you can put me anywhere”

Case studies from Australian graduate teachers in diverse and challenging schools

chapter 6|17 pages

Looking back with pride—looking forward in hope

The narratives of a transformative teacher

chapter 8|17 pages

Revisiting selves through a “success” perspective

An autoethnographic quest of a language teacher across intercultural spaces

chapter 9|17 pages

Path toward the construction of a professional identity

A narrative inquiry into a language teacher’s experiences

chapter 10|18 pages

“Successful teaching”

Neoliberal influences and emerging counter-narratives

chapter |12 pages

Conclusion

Context, interconnectedness, balance, and risk in teachers’ narratives