Narrative Inquiry On Professional Lives Of Elementary And Secondary Teachers

Professional lives of elementary and secondary teachers are what teachers experience in their daily educational practice. This broad definition embodies one of our basic standpoints. We believe that teachers have education as the same profession, and professional life belongs to every teacher, i.e. we are not only concerned with teachers of certain professional level.As to this understanding of teachers' professional lives, we get the inspiration from phenomenology's maxim, 'go back to things themselves' and the concept of life-world. When we go back to education itself, we are turning to the scene of education where education is happening, i.e. the life-world of education in which teachers experience education itself. What is happening between teachers and their students and others constitutes their professional lives.So, teachers' professional lives are always ongoing and this determines their enrichment. To exhibit the enrichment of teachers' professional lives is an important goal of this research. This understanding of teachers' professional lives and research goal finally lead us to narrative inquiry. "My Teachers and My Students", "My Classroom" and "My Growth" are three narrative clues followed in this article. The enrichment of teachers' professional lives is shown through stories such as "W's story", "On and off My Dais", "These Eyes", "Z's story", and "L and 'The Little Spray'" etc. In my reflection, problems such as "the disharmony in teacher-student relationship" and "false-study and false-research" in teachers' professional lives are especially examined. Chapter 3 is about teachers' professional sensibility—an important discovery of this research— which is expected to be found on more elementary and secondary teachers.Along with the process of gathering field texts and writing research report, a notion becomes clearer, that is, teachers' professional lives are different from others because of the students in their lives. Without the students, any so-called study or development of teachers will become meaningless.