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This article is a report of a qualitative research study into the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions of the lifelong learning practices of eight experienced educators. The research is grounded in a narrative tradition of research on teacher development where teacher learning is viewed as a creative, holistic, relational endeavour in which the personal and professional are intimately connected. It makes connections between narrative inquiry, holistic education and teacher development, and makes a contribution to the body of knowledge in teachers’ knowledge/ learning by demonstrating that in the experience of the study’s participants, meaningful lifelong learning is an ongoing process of creating and recreating the self.

SUMMARY The paper presents a holistic view of educational leadership that is based on relational learning, collaboration, connectedness and commitment to self, to others and to community. The context of the study is a community high school where teacher-leaders are responsible for the governance, the daily administration and the teaching in the school. The interconnectedness of teaching, learning and leading are acknowledged by teacher-leaders whose work is based in an understanding that the intellectual, emotional, social, moral, spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of human beings are inextricably interconnected. The focus for school leaders is on working to co-create a learning environment which emphasizes authentic self-expression, the development of relationships, and the development of the whole person within the school, the local and global communities. Two major themes are used to explicate and discuss the enactment of these issues and to outline the boundaries and obstacles encountered in the reali...

This article is set within the context of a school‐based change initiative, where we studied a number of teachers and students in order to understand the ways in which they understood and experienced the complexities of the change process, and to add their voices to the ongoing discussions around restructuring and school‐based change. We found that although there were some commonalties between how teachers and students experienced the changes being implemented, there were also some profound differences between the curriculum as planned by teachers and the curriculum as experienced by students. For the teachers, the themes of caring for students’ lives, recasting themselves as classroom practitioners and of working as collaborative colleagues were identified; for students, the themes were those of getting used to the place, and of re‐establishing their preferred way of working in this new setting. In our discussion and analysis of these themes we look at the implications for future school‐based ch...

The paper addresses the interconnectedness of theory and practice in initial teacher education, in teacher development and in educational reform. Focusing on the role of the teacher as it is reconceptualised within the international movement to reconstruct schools and schooling, the rationale for new kinds of teacher‐education programmes is outlined. A programme for the education of reflective professionals is described, where, within a community of inquiry, prospective teachers construct a professional knowledge in teaching that is uniquely theirs, and come to new understandings of themselves as professionals, of the students they teach and of the educational landscapes within which they live. Following this, a new vision of teacher education and teacher development is proposed which links personal and professional reform to the reform of schools and schooling, within communities of inquiry where teachers and students learn together, and collaborate to reform their own understandings, and the cu...

We draw on data collected by two researchers in two projects, one with an experienced and one with a novice teacher. We highlight connections between the teachers’ personal narratives and their professional practice. We describe educational settings and instructional practices that enabled the two teachers to recognise fragile stories in their personal and professional lives. As participant observers, through interviews and in an exchange of narrative accounts, we helped the teachers strengthen their fragile stories and witnessed a process of change in which the teachers structured their lives in such ways that safeguarded authenticity and congruency with important personal issues.

This is a narrative study of the construction and reconstruction of professional knowledge, where narrative is understood as both phenomenon and method. It is the story of one teacher's professiona...

(1995). New prospects for teacher education: narrative ways of knowing teaching and teacher learning. Educational Research: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 53-70.