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This chapter addresses a sensitive topic in the field of education: the relationship between and among narrative inquiry, critical analysis, and critical theory. It argues that narrative inquirers are critical – but not in the same way that critical theorists are critical, although they may draw on the same literature and terms. To make our point, we unpack three of our peer-reviewed articles and highlight our theoretical frames and research moves to demonstrate criticality in narrative inquiry. We specifically discuss (1) titles and topics, (2) research frameworks, (3) historical and contemporary data, (4) use of participants' voices (words and feelings), (5) themes, and (6) new knowledge. We mostly argue that narrative inquiry exists because of experience. From experience, everything else unfolds – including criticality – depending on where the researcher in relationship with research participants, takes the inquiry. This chapter explicitly addresses a lived issue known both inside the narrative inquiry community and outside of it.

This is a book for teacher educators. It is also a book for teacher candidates and educational stakeholders who are interested in using storied practice in teacher education. It is about teacher educators and teacher candidates as curriculum makers (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992) who engage in narrative inquiry practice. As editors of this volume, we came to this important writing project as a result of our respective work using narrative inquiry that originated from our studies with Dr. Michael Connelly and Dr. Jean Clandinin. In a large sense, this book represents our interpretations, as second-generation narrative inquirers, of three main ideas: narrative inquiry, curriculum making, and teacher education. Narrative inquiry, curriculum making, and teacher education are vitally interconnected concepts that offer an alternative way of understanding the current landscape of education. Narrative inquiry in teacher education would not have been possible without the groundbreaking work of Connelly and Clandinin.

This chapter explores literacy narratives as a narrative inquiry approach used in a Canadian education foundation course which focuses on story and experience as told and retold through letter-writing correspondence among teacher candidates. The process is illustrated in the chapter through a literacy narrative exemplar. The 3R framework developed by the author in her research program on poverty and education was applied to teacher candidates’ narrative ways of excavating storied experiences and assumptions in schooling. The 3R framework helps teacher candidates deconstruct their literacy narrative correspondences in order to avoid ‘hardening’ into their lived storied experiences as they work through the framework of: narrative reveal to help them excavate unconscious assumptions that surface in their writing; narrative revelation to show how they can interrogate further their own (sometimes biased) experiences, and; narrative reformation to show how prospective teachers can begin to transform teacher knowledge through awakened new narratives. Literacy narratives, as a curriculum making pedagogy to deconstruct formally and informally using personal educative experiences, readings from the course, and usage of the 3R framework, is a pedagogical example of social justice that gives dignity, respect, and perspective in order to reframe thinking about diverse issues in teaching and teacher education.

Purpose – This chapter explores letter writing as a narrative inquiry method in a teacher education course. The written dialog in letters by teacher candidates provided the author with deep and long-term reflection on teacher candidates' narratives of experience. In particular, the chapter examines how related literacy narratives combine critical written dialog with the written responses and counter-narratives of peers and a teacher educator.

Methodology and findings – The chapter focuses on letter correspondences from three teacher candidate participants in a longitudinal study as well as response letters to those candidates from the teacher educator. Transactional inquiry and relational knowing are conceptualizations that are employed to explore how the teacher candidates and the teacher educator are curriculum makers.

Value – The chapter discusses the impact of letter writing-related literacy narratives as a narrative inquiry method in teacher education programs as well as possible extensions for their use in graduate courses/research and for teacher development programs.

October 10^th, 2010

This chapter is a multinational policy analysis focusing on what happened in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil, Canada, Portugal, and USA. It is a follow-up to the first two analyses which were also conducted collaboratively (2019, 2022). The studies are constant-comparative. The four-country approach illuminates policies and practices in what hopefully is post-Covid-19 times. Neoliberal approaches to policymaking and education in general ensure that the technicalities of teaching received heightened attention to the neglect of the well-being of teachers and the agency afforded them. The critical situation of the teaching profession in the post-pandemic time means there are teacher shortages as well as the lowering of working conditions for teachers. Turmoil and crisis are two words that describe the education sector and are clearly illustrated in the media and in research. While the need to invest in education, and particularly teachers' education and career prospects, is reiterated in policy discourse, it is far from being a reality as the four cases show. The pandemic has exacerbated the existing problems in the field of education, causing heightening concern about teachers' recruitment, working conditions and well-being.

In this chapter, Cheryl Craig and Lily Orland-Barak, editors of International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A), expound on the traveling pedagogies theme as well as the theory–practice chasm, and conclude the edited volume with a model capturing the nature of fruitful, contextualized international pedagogies. Throughout the discussion, they highlight connections between and among potentially promising pedagogical approaches documented by the contributing authors whose countries of origins differ. As authors of this chapter and editors of this book, they claim that promising pedagogies have the potential to “travel” to other locales if their conditions of enactment are locally grounded, deliberated, and elaborated. This contextualization adds to the fluidity of knowledge mobilization to contexts different from the original one. Furthermore, all of the pedagogies have a praxical character to them, which means they strive to achieve a dialectical relationship between theory and practice. At the same time, they address local complexities in a reflective, deliberative, and evidence-based manner while acknowledging connections/contradictions in discourses and daunting policy issues/constraints/agendas. Against this “messy” backdrop, a model for traveling international pedagogies is proposed. The model balances a plethora of complexities, on the one hand, with the seemingly universal demand for uniformity, on the other hand. Through ongoing local, national, and international deliberation and negotiation, quality international pedagogies of potential use and value become readied for “travel”.