The six writers in this book explore the contribution and the
transferability of narrative inquiry from curriculum studies to daily
life in education and in healthcare. They examine the interconnectivity
of reconstructed experience with the construction of disciplinary
identity and knowledge. Thinking narratively, they write
auto/biographically about relationships between teachers, students,
nurses, colleagues, and/or people in their care. As narrative inquirers,
they are curious how research moves forward professional situations in
education and healthcare. The narrative plotlines of knowledge
construction, curriculum building and identity formation thread through
the chapters. In education and healthcare, the reconstructed experience
of a teacher is shown to be foundational to curriculum content and
processes. In nursing education, we see congruence between narrative
inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988,
1999) as a process that includes the teacher-researcher as
co-participant; and, theorists, such as Watson (1999), include the nurse
in the caring situation as shapers of the experience of people in their
care. As practitioner-researchers, teachers in education and healthcare
construct who they are and how they are in relationship in the context
of social situations. Inquiry, not certainty (Dewey, 1929), is a life
stance that is formative for education. Practitioners in education and
in healthcare will be interested in this book as a way to make meaning
of their experience. Policymakers and administrators will be interested
in this book as a way of conceptualizing teachers' knowledge as a source
of curriculum. Researchers will be interested in this book as a
demonstration of how narrative inquiry illuminates ways of being that
are educative and an innovative way to study curriculum.
