This article addresses ten 'tricky' questions related to narrative inquiry in the field of language teaching and learning research. The questions come from the author's experiences of presenting lectures and seminars on narrative inquiry in many different contexts. The questions deal with issues to do specifically with narrative inquiry methods as…

This article explores the identities of tutors working in one-to-one instructional arrangements, which entail a tutor and an adult English learner working together to meet the particular language learning needs and goals of the learner. The tutors in this study are matched with their partners through an organization in New Zealand which aims to…

In this article the researcher reports on a longitudinal study which investigated the imagined identities of a preservice English teacher in New Zealand and compared these with the identities she negotiated in her teacher education and then teaching practice nearly nine years later. The teacher, an immigrant from the Pacific Island of Tonga,…

Narrative research in language teaching and learning (LTL) is concerned with the stories teachers and learners tell about their lived and imagined experiences. Teachers typically tell about their professional development and their practices, and learners about their experiences of learning and using languages. What stories are, and indeed what…

This article presents a theoretical overview of the concept of teacher identity, particularly focusing on poststructuralist conceptions of what identity means, and shows how these ideas can be associated with ideas about narrative and narrative inquiry. It is argued that it is important for teachers, through reflective practice or teacher…

The analysis of narrative data in applied linguistics has focused to varying degrees on their content, form, and context, with content and thematic analyses being the focus in much of the narrative research in language learning and teaching (Pavlenko 2007). The aim of this article is to report on a positioning analysis of a small story about the…

In recent years there have been persistent calls for teachers to explore their teaching contexts in order to become more aware of them and to understand them. Doing so would enable teachers to make more informed decisions about their practice and their students' learning. This article outlines a narrative approach for exploring context. A…

This article reports on one aspect of a larger study which aimed to explore the context-specific experiences of English teachers at tertiary institutions in China (Wette & Barkhuizen, 2007). Data were collected during a professional development program run in the summer of 2006. The program aimed to cover recent trends in the field of second…

Narrative inquiry in language teacher education aims to understand the experiences of teachers in the particular contexts in which they teach. This article reports on the use of narrative frames as a means of investigating the teaching experiences of university English teachers in China. This study used four specifically designed narrative frames…