Ten years after: Stories of teacher developmen

This is a story not only of their retention but also of the growth of seven teachers' knowledge of the practical art of teaching from 1992--2002. I present my arts-based narrative inquiry in terms of five stories of teacher development: a story of how I came to the topic of teacher development; a story of teacher education literature; a story of six of my colleagues and how the research was conducted; a story of conversations, wherein we seven teachers respond to the experience of development in our own words; and finally a story comparing the modern story of teacher development with our personal stories and both classical and popular myths. The major finding of the study is that genuine or authentic teacher development was not acknowledged as an outcome of institutional professional development initiatives over a ten year period. The professional development of the seven teachers was shown rather to consist of highly personalized, often unanticipated, and ongoing processes. Their development was shown to occur mainly in non-formal and non-institutional settings. Modernist teacher education programs were shown, in contrast, to be limited in their usefulness for planning, conducting, and explaining personally relevant teacher development. By drawing upon an arts-based narrative framework, the mythic significances of the teachers' experiences were recognized and contrasted with the underlying societal myths implicit in modern mass education and teacher education programs. Asynchronous Computer Mediated Communication (ACMC) was used as a research tool for reflective journalling. ACMC in the form of world wide web logs promoted our conversational exchanges. This inquiry is itself an example of self-authored collaborative development and the enriched understanding of teaching obtained by seven teachers.