In 1984, Ryan and Sackrey's "Strangers in Paradise" explored the challenges of the professoriate for those from working-class backgrounds. Nearly 40 years later, there is a substantial body of narrative and reflective writing by working-class academics. We present findings from analysis of 218 narratives from working-class academics.…

In this article, 10 award-winning post-secondary instructors use narrative inquiry to explore failure individually by reflecting on their own definition and framework of failure, by giving examples of their experience with failure, and by elaborating how they deal with and learn from failure. The outcome of this collective exploration is an…

Instructors in higher education are often asked to reflect on their pedagogical choices in formulaic, detached, rote ways such as end of the year faculty evaluations or in response to peer review of teaching. Yet, because of the parameters for these reflections, they often lack depth or much consideration. Particularly because higher education…

Literature and research have shown that professional development constitutes an essential dimension in constructing both work and professional identity. An important aspect in such development is training. In the field of adult education, different authors (Pratt, 1993; Mezirow, 1985; Schön, 1996; Silva, 2007) emphasize the importance of placing…

This study explores eight teacher narratives related to pre-trip preparation for the 2018 South Korea Research Trip sponsored by the Korean War Legacy Foundation (KWLF). The trip is an annual event, entering its 4th year, that immerses primary, secondary and post-secondary teachers in Korean culture. Utilising Narrative Inquiry, we explored…

In this duoethnography, two rural Canadian women explore personal memories, stories, and conversations to illuminate the factors involved in our willingness/unwillingness to change to become more climate conscious in our everyday lives. Rural areas remain understudied and face unique challenges in sustaining changes to become more climate…

While the profession has generated many books on information literacy, none to date have validated exactly why it is so difficult to teach. In her new book, Reale posits that examining and reflecting on the reality of those factors is what will enable practitioners to meet the challenge of their important mandate. Using the same warm and…

Academia has been dominated by European/settler ways of knowing while denying the existence and validity of Indigenous epistemologies, science, and philosophies. Post-secondary structures were not built to be inclusive spaces, they were built without Indigenous voices or considerations and often housed individuals and departments who have…

This article presents an adaptation of an arts-based research method usually reserved for child-focused research to examine organizational processes. We developed Draw, Write, Reflect (DWR), advancing a known method, Draw and Write, for investigating phenomena relating to child participants, to explore a new context: adults engaging in academic…

While previous studies have explored many aspects of teacher educators' identities, limited attention has been paid to how teacher educators understand the process of their academic identity construction in higher education. To address this issue, we draw on interviews and other supplementary data collected from 19 teacher education academics in…

Drawing on a decade of extensive digital storytelling at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), experienced faculty practitioners have expanded story work beyond traditional personal narratives into community engagement and public scholarship projects. While social and civic aspirations have been present in the work of Joe Lambert and…

This paper engages with the central theme of this special issue, "From the Margins to the Centre," as a particular kind of narrative that occupies the imagination of literacy educators in the academy, particularly those who are located in the "centre," but whose experience ironically finds them "pinned to the margins"…

In this plática, we share how we have deployed the methodologies of critical reflexión and plática~testimonio/haki~shahadat, which helped us enact a decolonial praxis of solidarity with intentional acts that grounded us in border thinking and opened the possibilities of creating an otherwise of love and harmony. We illustrate a praxis of…

"Testimonios" are used as a method to help understand and share the authors' lived experiences as "tocayos" with society and the human world, and to create interaction between both of them. The term "tocayo" is used to identify people who share the same name. The purpose of this paper is to share the lived experiences…

Purpose: This study presents the emergence of my dynamic bilingualism-induced critical bilingual identity by drawing upon Garcia and Wei's translanguaging perspectives. Design/Methodology/Approach: I adopted an autoethnographic approach focusing on teacher development through research and practice, supported by research on fostering dynamic…