Observational narrative knowledging in early professional development of student teachers of English

Abstract

This paper presents a narrative inquiry approach to understanding the early professional development (PD) of student teachers of English at a state university in Turkey. With the twofold functioning of narrative as a tool for both research and PD, we probe into how student teachers’ early PD trajectories are shaped through observational narrative knowledging. Data consisted of group discussions, semi-structured interviews, metaphor elicitations, and informal conversations that accompanied the main data collection tool, i.e., narrative frames collected during the practicum. The triangulated data were subjected to a multi-tiered collaborative content analysis. The findings showed that narrative-embedded observations helped student teachers organize and attach meaning to their early field experiences, and thus build on their self-awareness, critical thinking, and reflectivity for future classroom practices. We also reported how the participants reflected retrospectively, in the course of, and the posteriori of writing the classroom observational narratives. Through narrative knowledging, we offer a more nuanced approach to aiding student teachers’ early PD.