The Methodology of Narrative Inquiry in Teacher Education

This chapter introduces and discusses the methodology adopted in the development of the Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program (RLP). The RLP has more than a dozen-year history with a seven-year period of 2013–2020 enhanced by the Canada-China Partnership Grant Project “during which purpose and method were strengthened and sharpened for university and school researchers and organizers” (Xu & Connelly, Palgrave handbook of teacher education research, comparative studies in teacher education section. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, p. 27). Narrative inquiry as a way of thinking of individual lives and cultural histories is the primary RLP program methodology and is one of the main reasons why and how the program is sustained. This idea cuts across the different subject matter methodologies brought to the project by team members and graduate students (Connelly & Xu, Teachers and Teaching 627–646, 2019; Xu & Connelly, Frontiers of Education in China 135–150, 2017). Based on our longitudinal collaborative school-based research (Connelly & Xu, SAGE handbook of curriculum and instruction. Sage Publications, International Educational and Professional Publisher, 2008; Xu, Understanding China’s education reform: Creating cross cultural knowledge, pedagogies and dialogue. Routledge, 2011; Xu & Connelly, Teaching and Teacher Education 219–227, 2009; Xu & Connelly, Narrative Inquiry 349–370, 2010), we developed the “reciprocal learning as collaborative partnership” framework to guide the larger Canada-China Partnership Project (Connelly & Xu, Teachers and Teaching 627–646, 2019; Xu & Connelly, Frontiers of Education in China 135–150, 2017). West-East reciprocal learning is both a concept guiding project purpose and an approach guiding project school activities (Xu, Teachers and Teaching 703–729, 2019). In this process, reciprocal learning as collaborative partnership is a guiding principle making possible the use of different subject area methodologies within a governing methodological frame. In concrete practical terms, this framing made it possible for people with very different research backgrounds and perhaps with no knowledge of the governing idea of narrative inquiry to work collaboratively toward productive ends.