Narrative Conceptions of Knowledge: Toward Understanding the Experiences of Early-Career Teacher Leavers

• In Event: The Lives of Beginning Teachers: Experiences in a Work Lifeworld

Abstract

Using narrative conceptualizations of teacher knowledge and identity (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995: Connelly & Clandinin, 1999), the authors inquire into the experiences of six teachers who left teaching within their first five years as a way to rethink how to understand early teacher attrition. “one very stable finding is that attrition is high for young teachers” (Guarino, Santibanez, & Daley, 2006, p. 10), yet few studies focus on the experiences of individuals who left teaching (Buchanan, 2009, Rinke, 2013). By considering this view of teacher knowledge along with an understanding that teacher knowledge is shaped in, and across, personal and professional landscapes, the authors show how teachers’ lives shape their coming to teaching– and coming to leave teaching.

Authors

• Lee Mason Schaefer, University of Regina

• C. Aiden Downey, Emory University

• D. Jean Clandinin, University of Alberta