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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.

In this chapter, I take up Smith’s (2012) conceptualization of pedagogy as “the thinking and practice of those educators who look to accompany learners; care for and about them; and bring learning to life” (np). I first make visible my thinking about parents and families which underlies my pedagogy. Here, I use Green and Christian’s (1998) notion of “accompanying” and Noddings’ (2002) notion of “caring about” to elaborate on my metaphorical understanding of the position of educators as one of walking alongside parents and family members in the education and schooling of their children. I then reflectively turn to my practice with undergraduate teacher education students to discuss what I do, in my own walking alongside, to live out a “curriculum of parents” (Pushor, 2011, 2013) with students. I use my course, Teaching and Learning in Community Education, to provide a live example of my pedagogy in practice and, finally, I reflect on my experiences within this pedagogy of working with parents and family to pull forward considerations that I feel are worthy of “deeper noticing” (Bateson, 1995).

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to define and explain a curriculum of parents, its purpose and importance as an addition to teacher education curriculum, and how the author lives out this curriculum alongside teacher candidates.

Approach – The chapter gives an account of the author's narrative inquiry into the lived experiences of two teacher candidates who were engaged in a curriculum of parents.

Findings – The chapter highlights how the teacher candidates’ acceptance of dominant notions of parents as outsiders to the processes of schooling or as individuals to be wary or fearful of was interrupted by their experiences within a curriculum of parents. An account is given of their dis/positioning as they came to “un-know” their understandings of professional as someone with power and control and to reknow it as an act of standing together with parents; as a reflection of the “person to person.”

Research implications – This initial narrative inquiry makes visible how intentionally making and living out a curriculum of parents alongside teacher candidates impacts their beliefs and assumptions about parents and the way in which they position themselves as teachers in their work with parents and families.

Value – The value of the chapter is that it is the first work that has detailed a curriculum of parents. The chapter shows the major contributions such a curriculum can add to teacher education programs – as it moves the curricular commonplace of milieu from a subordinated position in relation to the other commonplaces of student, teacher, and subject matter to one of coordination.

October 10^th, 2010

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to trace the origins of narrative inquiry as an empirical research method specifically created to examine how teachers come to know in their own terms.

Approach – The chapter reviews key conceptualizations in the teaching and teacher education field chronologically.

Findings – The review begins with Clandinin and Connelly's groundbreaking work concerning teachers’ personal practical knowledge, the professional knowledge landscapes of schools, and stories to live by (teacher identity). Three other important narrative conceptualizations on the research line are then highlighted: narrative resonance, narrative authority, and knowledge communities. Special attention is also paid to how narrative inquiry has fueled studies having to do with curriculum, subject matter, and culture. Narrative inquiry's important contributions to the emergence of the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices genre of research is additionally highlighted, along with several more recent advances having to do with collaborative narrative inquiries, studies with children, and reforming school landscapes.

Research implications – Lingering issues relating to narrative inquiry's acceptance as a legitimate research approach are also discussed; latent opportunities are likewise paid attention.

Value – The value of the chapter is that it is the first work that has specifically followed developments on the Connelly–Clandinin research line. The chapter shows the major contributions that the world-class research program – and the associated research projects spawned from it – have made to teaching and teacher education internationally.

This chapter restates the purpose of the three-volume series and discusses themes that reoccur in chapters and sections of Part B, which first appeared in chapters and sections of Part A of the series. While Part A of the three-book set focused on pedagogies of teacher selection, reflection, narrative ways of knowing, identity, and mentoring and mediation, Part B of the three-volume series centers on pedagogies of preservice teacher leadership, diversity, parents and family, social justice, and technology. Ideas having to do with traveling stories, the theory-practice split, and the praxical nature of pedagogies are taken up. To conclude, the model for traveling pedagogies, which was first proposed in Part A of the series, once again appears, with a few sub-themes added from International Teacher Education (Part B), which support the already identified framework in International Teacher Education (Part A).