ABSTRACT
As colleagues working together in school-based teacher training, we describe and reflect on a year of conversations in which we explore our stories to live by. We consider the nature and value of fictional writing and explore what prompts us to choose our metaphors, how they help us create and understand our own stories, and, in turn how we support our students to reflect through stories, particularly those who are resistant to reflection. We share our experiences of writing stories and discuss examples of our work with trainee teachers, showing how both narrative and metaphor can work as tools for developing reflective and reflexive practice. By thinking with rather than simply about the stories, we show how narratives that generate deep, critical insights into practice can be a powerful means of addressing dilemmas and puzzles. Through our co-created narrative we have come to learn something about each other and also about ourselves, demonstrating the potential relational power of shared storying of experiences.
