Creative Writings, Creative Analysis: Exploring Narrative Ways to Analyse Teachers’ Writings

In this chapter, our aim is to explore different narrative ways to think, read, and analyse teachers’ creative writings. Creative writings are one novel way to produce reflective narrative data, and they have the potential to evoke more than formal, non-fiction narratives can. We understand narrative research as an exploration of experience captured in a story-formed data but also as research that is ethical and relational by nature. Teachers’ creative writings were produced in a two-part creative writing workshop. There were eight teachers in the first meeting and seven teachers in the second. Various kinds of creative writings were produced, which were based on the teachers’ autobiographical experiences but expressed by utilising literary art genres such as prose, drama, and poetry. We selected one creative writing for closer analysis. To draw a holistic picture of how we explored the narrative ways of analysing the creative writing, we showcase the analysis phase by phase in this chapter. Because of the richness of creative writings various means of analyses are needed. Creative writings can act as a place where teachers are allowed to fight against the cultural rules of how to be a ‘proper’ teacher.