Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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Narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: Focus on English

as a foreign language in China
Shijing Xu a, *,1, F. Michael Connelly b, 2
a
National Research Center for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University; Faculty of Education, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue,
Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada
b
Department of Curriculum Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto,
Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Teacher education and development takes place within an encompassing local system of education and
Received 27 February 2008 ongoing forms of school improvement. Critical to successful teacher development when Western ideas
Received in revised form are being adopted in other cultures is narratively linking development programmes to this local
29 September 2008
education system, such as in China, and to its culturally established ways of knowing and being. This
Accepted 23 October 2008
paper presents a narrative inquiry approach to teacher development that builds on the existing
educational system, ongoing school reforms, and culturally established ways of knowing and being. The
Keywords:
paper concludes with the potential of teacher development to shape global values that may be shared
Teacher development
Narrative inquiry among cultures.
Teacher education Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Cross-cultural education
Teacher knowledge
English as a foreign language

1. Introduction
The theme of this paper grew out of a consideration of teacher
education and teacher development for the teaching of English as
a foreign language (EFL) in China. China is undertaking a national
reform of EFL teacher education. Michael was invited to give
keynote addresses to two national conferences on EFL teacher
education and to discuss the application of narrative inquiry to the
Chinese situation. Shijing, who taught English as a foreign language
in China, and who works collaboratively with Michael in Canadian
school-based studies of Chinese immigrants, also spoke at these
conferences. These conferences were designed with speakers from
abroad who were expected to bring forward outside, international,
views and knowledge. Local Chinese speakers brought forward
internal Chinese knowledge, views and problems (e.g. Wang, 2007;
Wu, 2007a, 2007b; Zou, 2008). Shijing, having taught and worked
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 519 253 3000x3828; fax: þ1 519 971 3694.
E-mail addresses: shijing@uwindsor.ca (S. Xu), mconnelly@oise.utoronto.ca (F.M.
Connelly).
1
Shijing Xu is Affiliated Research Associate of National Research Center for
Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. This work
was sponsored by the Center.
2
Tel.: þ1 416 978 0254; fax: þ1 416 926 4769.
in both China and Canada, brought both an insider’s and an out-
sider’s perspective. This dual stance is reflected in the fact that she
holds a faculty position in a Canadian teacher education institution
while also holding an affiliated Research Associate post in China’s
National Research Center for Foreign Language Education. Our
purpose in this article is to draw on this experience, and to think
through some of the possible consequences of narrative inquiry for
teacher development in settings where Western ideas are being
adopted for use in other cultures. The specific tension that runs
through this paper, and which explicitly shows up in the set of
considerations for EFL teacher education and development that
concludes the paper, is how to create balance and harmony
between Western imported ideas and ideologies and Chinese
cultural knowledge strengths. As Zongjie Wu (2007b), a Chinese
language scholar, agonises while reflecting on the recent history of
Chinese language reform, ‘‘The Western educational system that
accompanied Western knowledge became the only acceptable system
of study in schooling. Confucianism as a form of pedagogy was thor-
oughly marginalized’’ (p. 2). Based on her ‘‘New Basic Education’’
project initiated in the 1990s, Lan Ye (2006) discusses Chinese
cultural roots and strengths in education and sees the need for
a balance between Chinese traditions and western ideas.
Our specific focus in this paper is on EFL teachers in China
though we believe the ideas presented herein are applicable

0742-051X/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2008.10.006
220 S. Xu, F.M. Connelly / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227
elsewhere, and to teachers in other areas. We make the case that
educational reforms in teacher education and development in
English as a foreign language in China, and elsewhere, need to
begin with local cultural knowledge before importing ideas from
abroad. We develop two main threads to make this case: the place
of teacher development in educational reform, and narrative
inquiry as a way of thinking about teacher education and devel-
opment. We develop this general stance by first discussing China’s
educational reform context as a positioning frame for our discus-
sion of Narrative Inquiry. We summarise the concept of narrative
inquiry as it applies to English as a foreign language teacher
education and development, and we conclude with a set of
considerations for English as a foreign language teacher education
reform in non-Western settings.
2. The reform context
English as a foreign language in China is undergoing reforms in
keeping with China’s overall development (Zuo, 2008). According
to the Higher Education Department of the Chinese Ministry of
Education (2007) ‘‘College English is not only a language course
that provides basic knowledge of English, but is also a capacity
enhancement course that helps students to broaden their horizons
and learn about different cultures in the world’’ (p. 17). The focus on
English is relatively recent and reflects a shift in the relative
influence of Russia and America in the world and on China.
Moreover, as Li (2006) observes, China’s emphasis on educational
reform is part of China’s overall modernisation effort. Modernisa-
tion, some argue, is prerequisite to successful national develop-
ment (Inkeles, 1975; So, 1990). Li (2006) points out that the People’s
Republic of China has been focused on modernisation since the late
1970’s in an effort to catch up with the West.
These developments in modernisation, and the emphasis on
English, are directly connected with the events that brought us to
the China language conferences and to the writing of this paper. It is
well known that Confucian values place a high emphasis on
education and that teachers have a special place in Chinese thought
(Xu, 2006). The result is that teacher education, and its reform, is
a high priority in China (China Ministry of Education & State
Commission of Education, 1996; China Ministry of Education and
Training, 1999; Wu, 2007a; Xie, 2001; Ye, 2006; Zou, 2008).
The priority given to teacher education reform was enhanced by
China’s curriculum reform policy in the face of internationalisation
and globalisation of education (see, Li, 2006; Ye, 2006; Zha, 2003;
Zou, 2008). The New Curriculum System for Basic Education is
designed to replace a curriculum that was seen by Chinese
authorities, as overemphasizing learning of disciplinary knowledge
and being isolated from the needs of the times, social development
and students’ individuality (Xie, 2001; Ye, 2006; Zou, 2008).
There appear to be strong links between policy development,
teacher education reform, and curriculum reform in the overall
reform of education in China (Ye, 2006). To the extent that this is an
accurate picture of the Chinese educational reform context it differs
significantly from reforms in North America and Britain which have
tended to be dominated by curriculum development, teacher
development and, recently, achievement testing and accountability
policies. What is different is that one or the other of these reform
types has tended to be pursued aggressively and somewhat inde-
pendently in the West while in China the reforms run in tandem.
China’s teacher education and curriculum reforms are related and
are part of a larger educational policy whole (Wang, 2007; Ye,
2006). Recent policy initiatives, particularly in the United States (US
Department of Education, 2007), have focused on achievement and
accountability with little emphasis on teacher education and
curriculum though these matters, of course, were impacted and
changes were made as a result of the achievement-accountability
policy. For a comprehensive general discussion of this educational
reform literature see chapters by Apple (2008), Cochran-Smith and
Demers (2008), Pinar (2008) and Welner and Oakes (2008) in The
Sage Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction (Connelly, He, & Phil-
lion, 2008). Westbury (2008) provides a comprehensive overview
in which he discusses reform from the point of view of central
governments.
2.1. What works?
The literature on educational reform is somewhat discouraging.
Chinese educational reforms and studies, those in EFL curriculum
and teacher development in particular, tend to be conducted
mostly within Western research and development norms and drew
heavily on the Western literature for its discussion. On the other
hand, the overwhelming impression left from reading reviews of
American and European reform implementation (e.g. Fullan, 2008)
is that nothing works as planned. It may be that, like stories in the
popular media, bad news sells. But it is deeper than this. Education,
in its deepest philosophical sense is, as Dewey (1938) said, the
other side of the coin to life. Life is education; education is life. In
practice, of course, education and life may seem far apart. Western
reforms in recent years have often seemed to separate life and
education, for example, the accountability and achievement testing
oriented reforms of the No Child Left Behind Act in the United
States (US Department of Education, 2007). When life and educa-
tion stray apart, or collide, Dewey wrote that the effect would be
‘‘miseducative’’ (Dewey, 1938, p. 25), something that Valenzuela
(2005) says has occurred for dispossessed groups in the United
States. In the Chinese educational context, as Wu (2006, p. 343–
344) points out, ‘‘students are constantly tested and compared to
make them aware of their ‘weaknesses’ in comparison to standards
of evaluation. Various public terms are invented to differentiate
students, and put them into relationships of competition. Many
students are thrown into an inner struggle to make sense of
themselves according to these terms’’.
When educational change and improvement is thought of in
terms of life and living, it is not surprising that an educational
intervention does not change life as expected. This is especially true
when planned changes appear to be distant from life. Life is
complex and much of what we value is hardly measurable. The
richness and complexity of these matters led Eisner (1994) to write
that schools teach three curricula; the explicit, the implicit, or ‘‘the
hidden’’ (Jackson, 1968), and the null (things excluded from the
explicit curriculum). Educational reform is inevitably focused on
the explicit. But the implicit, hidden, curriculum of unanticipated
effects and learning are also inevitably influential in student lives,
as are the assumptions built into leaving things out of the explicit
curriculum i.e. Eisner’s null curriculum. This is so because of the
fundamental truth in Dewey’s equation of life and education.
A reform programme may be designed with little regard for how
learners, and teachers, experience schooling but, regardless of pre-
established reform plans, learners and teachers live out school
lives. Life goes on with unexpected results. Life, in Eastern views, is
a continuity of being. With discrepancy between theory and prac-
tice and discontinuity in our educational programmes, reform plans
may go awry and programmes may be poorly implemented, as
Fullan and Steigelbauer (1991) and Zou (2008) show, or lives may
be damaged with miseducative consequences as Valenzuela (2005)
and Wu (2006) show. This way of thinking about educational
change helps explain why teachers are often blamed for failed
education reform. Policies and curriculum programmes have built
in explicit expectations for students. When the implicit over-
whelms the explicit and expectations are not met because educa-
tional life is more complex than can be imagined ahead of time by
policy makers and other reformers, teachers are seen as the culprit.
 S. Xu, F.M. Connelly / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227
The extreme response to this tension between life and education is
the attempt to develop ‘‘teacher proof’’ curricula. In this view
teachers are not so much teachers as they are transmitters of
external purposes and materials (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988;
Darling-Hammond, 2006).
Teachers are at the human-to-human curriculum and teaching
intersection, at the point where formal curriculum, students,
teachers and culture intersect into. They are, as the idea of teacher
proof curriculum ironically implies, vital to educational success and
reform. But instead of teacher proofing the process, it is important
to understand how teachers relate to external forces like policy and
curriculum materials as they teach. Educational reform comes
down always to teachers and students acting together in curricular
settings. It is during the teaching act and in follow-up to it that the
explicit, hidden and null curricula take shape in learner’s lives.
Learning how teachers experience and narrate the teaching act, and
the reform intentions they are expected to teach, says much about
education as a form of living. The most extensive programme of
research linking teachers, reform and narrative inquiry in North
America is Craig’s (2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2006) school-based work.
She documents a nuanced picture of teacher development amidst
imposed educational reform. In China, Wu (2006) illustrates his
understanding of practitioner research as a form of life with an
Eastern interpretation. He draws on Taoist worldview to under-
stand teachers’ life in the classroom, ‘‘a world where the deepest
concerns of life are often reduced to abstract words’’ and he is
concerned that ‘‘the very insights of life may be obscured by
inflated words’’ (Wu, 2006, p. 332).
This brief account of educational reform reveals the centrality of
teachers and teacher development to educational reform and
improvement. Both those who favor enhancing the professional
role of teachers, and those who wish either to train teachers for
specific tasks and/or reduce their influence through teacher
proofing, recognise this centrality. Schwab (1962) recognised this
centrality by naming ‘‘teacher’’ as a commonplace of curriculum
planning. But there are distinctly different, even opposing, views of
this teacher commonplace in reform. In the following section we
briefly discuss these different views.
3. Teacher knowledge versus knowledge-for-teachers
Three main ways of responding to the centrality of teachers are
teacher proofing of curriculum, emphasizing knowledge-for-
teachers, and emphasizing teacher knowledge. Teacher proofing
refers to the detailed writing of curriculum materials in such a way
that teachers merely transmit curriculum content with minimal
modification. The purpose is to minimise, even eliminate, teacher
effects. This view has been largely dismissed in the literature,
though examples show up from time to time.
The distinction between knowledge-for-teachers and teacher
knowledge refers to knowledge taught to teachers versus what
teachers know through life experience, including what is taught to
them (Connelly & Clandinin, 2000). The most common response to
the centrality of teachers in reform is knowledge-for-teachers by
which is meant teaching teachers the knowledge and skills needed
for certification or to implement particular curriculum pro-
grammes. An Internet scan reveals hundreds of such activities. For
instance, a description of the Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT),
Cambridge ESOL (Ashton & Harrison, 2007) refers to ‘‘the core
professional knowledge needed by teachers of English as a second
language (p. 1). As noted above, there is an extensive Western
literature primarily from England, the United States, Canada and
Australia (e.g. Apple, 2008; Fullan, 2008; Levin, 2008; Welner &
Oakes, 2008; Westbury, 2008) documenting the limitations of
educational reform in general and, specifically, the limitations of
221
attempts to improve programme implementation by knowledge
and skills training programmes for teachers.
Teacher knowledge refers to the ways teachers know themselves
and their professional work situations. Teacher knowledge is
a narrative construct which references the totality of a person’s
personal practical knowledge gained from formal and informal
educational experience. In a review of three programmes of
research on teacher knowledge Fenstermacher (1994) referred to
teacher knowledge as the knowledge that teachers generate as
a result of their experience as teachers. Teacher knowledge includes
what teachers are formally taught in knowledge and skills training
programmes, but also includes much more than this. The concept
refers to everything that a teacher brings to bear on any particular
situation. When a teacher responds to a student or designs
a particular lesson, their actions and plans are based on the totality
of their experience. They respond holistically as persons. It would
be a rare and unusual teacher who stopped in the middle of a lesson
to consult a list of learnings from a knowledge-for-teachers work-
shop before taking action. The three teacher knowledge research
programmes reviewed by Fenstermacher (1994) were identified by
three sets of researchers: Shulman (e.g. Shulman, 1987), Munby
et al. (e.g. Munby, Russell, & Martin, 2001), and Connelly and
Clandinin (1988). These three programmes of research have
somewhat different theoretical starting points but all share the
view that it is what teachers know as persons, more than what they
are taught, that is central both to understanding teacher action and
to the design of programmes for school reform.
Connelly and Clandinin’s work grows out of narrative inquiry and
is the line of work discussed in this paper. Craig’s work, noted above,
is an important complement to this line of work because of her focus
on a narrative approach to understanding school reform. In the
following pages we define narrative inquiry as both phenomenon
and method, describe, historically, steps in the development of
a narrative idea of teacher development, explain the general features
of narrative as method, and present a set of considerations of
importance in a narrative approach to EFL teacher education and
development. We conclude with a short postscript on community
development and the intersection of ways of knowing and being.
4. What is narrative inquiry?3
Narrative inquiry is a way of thinking about life (Clandinin &
Connelly, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, 2005). Learning how to
think narratively is more important than learning definitions, steps
and methods. The reason for this is that narrative inquiry is
a conception of the phenomenal world in which experience is
mediated by story. Philosophically, narrative inquiry is less about
method than it is about the phenomena studied via method. For
this reason we define narrative inquiry as both phenomenon and
method. Narrative is the phenomenon of inquiry because every-
thing, including teacher development, is a phenomenon narrated
through stories. The phenomena of narrative inquiry are, them-
selves, narrative in nature. In this, narrative inquiry differs from
other methods. It would make no sense, for instance, to say the
phenomena of factor analysis or ethnography were factor analysis
and ethnography. But it does make sense to say that the
phenomena of narrative inquiry are narratives. As Connelly and
Clandinin (1990, p. 2) put it, ‘‘It is equally correct to say ‘inquiry into
narrative’ as it is ‘narrative inquiry.’ By this we mean that narrative
3
In a review of the formalistic boundaries of narrative with other forms of
inquiry Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) describe several alternative lines of narrative
inquiry that answer to the question what is narrative inquiry? Our discussion in this
paper refers to the line of inquiry associated with Connelly and Clandinin and, more
specifically, to narrative inquiry for school-based research (Connelly & Xu, 2008a,
2008b).
222 S. Xu, F.M. Connelly / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227
is both phenomenon and method. Narrative names the structured
quality of experience to be studied, and it names the patterns of
inquiry for its study.’’ Narrative is the method of inquiry because
the inquiry is itself a narrative process. Let us now unpack this
concept drawing on Connelly and Clandinin’s line of work.
4.1. Narrative as phenomenon: a brief history
4.1.1. Reform and school improvement context
During the last half century, school reform in North America and
Great Britain was mainly through curriculum development, though
accountability and achievement testing have been the recent focus.
Curriculum development reform results were poor, and the United
States Office of Education launched a grants programme to
understand why. A Connelly (1980) grant was designed to study the
implementation of school board policies in Toronto. The focus was
on teacher development as the key to successful curriculum
development. An important outcome of this research was the
development of the idea of narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin,
1990). According to Clandinin, Pushor, and Orr (2007), the 1990
entrée marked the first appearance of the term in the literature. The
relevant context for the development of this programme of narra-
tive inquiry research was, accordingly, school reform and
improvement. Narrative inquiry, at least in this line of work, grew
out of a motivation to improve life through education.
4.1.2. Development of a narrative idea of teacher development
There are important intellectual resources and four main stages
in the development of a narrative idea of teacher development
based on this line of work.
4.1.2.1. Intellectual resources. Two intellectual resources were crit-
ical: Joseph Schwab (1970, 1971, 1973, 1983) and his ideas on the
‘‘practical’’ nature of curriculum, and John Dewey (1938) and his
theory of experience. Schwab makes a sharp distinction between
theory and research in the pure disciplines, and theory and
research in practical, professional, fields like teacher development.
A misguided practice in educational inquiry, for Schwab, is that
researchers tend to think and act theoretically.
Schwab’s work is theoretically grounded in the Aristotelian
distinction between theoretical, practical and productive disci-
plines, especially as that work was interpreted and extended by
McKeon (1952). Schwab’s critique was directed to curriculum
studies but his ideas apply to any educational field where educa-
tional practices and practitioners are concerned. Schwab observed
that rather than directly entering into and participating in curric-
ulum practices in schools and elsewhere, curriculum scholars
undertook theoretical exegeses and applications to those real world
curricular practices. Basically, he made a similar argument about
educational research to that made above about educational reforms
that separate life and education. Schwab (1969, p. 3) called the
overemphasis and overuse of theory a ‘‘flight from the subject of
the field’’. At the time when psychology was much in evidence in
educational theory, Schwab pointed out that instead of studying
how people experienced teaching and learning, educational
researchers borrowed psychological theories and applied them to
ways of thinking about teaching and learning situations.
Following this wrong, for Schwab, logic of theory application
means that teacher education and development is often treated as
the application of theories, for instance, the application of theories
of language learning. Theory to practice, following Schwab’s
thinking, is upside down. For Schwab, research should begin amidst
actual practices. Theory should be referenced and applied only after
documenting practice and its limitations.
Dewey’s work is important because through him, and others
such as Polanyi (1958) and his concept of personal knowledge, it is
possible to gain a theoretical understanding of what it means,
personally, to know and how that knowing is developed through
experience. Though both Dewey and Polanyi’s work is philosoph-
ical and theoretical, it provides an alternative way of thinking about
practice. Working with Dewey’s ideas, a school-based, practice-
oriented researcher is compelled to think about the actual experi-
ence of practice rather than an idealised form of theoretically
defined practice. Moreover, Dewey’s terms provided an analytic
framework for studying practical experience. These ideas are
developed later in this paper. Polanyi’s work was particularly
important for grounding experiential studies of practice in the
educationally defensible language of knowledge; a term that Deng
and Luke (2008) point out is the central question of curriculum
studies. Polanyi argued that for persons, all knowledge is personal
and intersubjective. Polanyi drew a distinction between knowledge
as it is thought of as appearing in libraries, archives, and books, and
knowledge as it exists in a person. A person experiences their
knowledge. Therefore, for Polanyi, personal knowledge has
aesthetic, emotional and moral qualities. Knowledge is not merely
logical and objective. This notion was important for the line of work
discussed here because for an understanding of practices such as
teacher education for foreign language teaching and learning, it is
not enough to know the objective, logical, parameters of linguistics
and teaching methods to be taught to teachers. It is necessary to
know what teachers already know when teacher education begins
in order to understand the narrative context shaping a teacher’s
learning. How teachers know and experience their knowledge is
important to understanding the process.
Thus, Schwab, Dewey and Polanyi are important intellectual
resources in the move from the ‘‘flight’’ to theory, to the implicit,
intimate, experiential, personal, practical, features that drive
practice. The practical via Schwab, and the experiential via Dewey
and Polanyi, are key intellectual resources in our theoretical
approach to both the phenomenon and the method of narrative
inquiry for teacher development.
These resources led to four stages in the development of our
concept of narrative: origins, personal practical knowledge,
professional knowledge landscapes, and the narrative intersection
of ways of knowing and being.
4.1.2.2. Origins. Disciplinary knowledge was the principal concept
driving curriculum development in North America in the middle of
the last half century (Pinar, 2008). Connelly (1968) worked in plant
ecology. His research team started with curriculum materials, and
then moved to work with teachers where it was found that it was
teachers, rather than theoretically sound curriculum materials, that
made a difference to teaching and learning (e.g. Finegold, 1974).
Connelly undertook a study of teacher deliberation and choice
(Connelly & Dienes, 1982), the idea being that teacher thinking
would bridge the gap between curriculum materials and teachers’
practical classroom implementation. But this idea of teacher
thinking had limited application. Instead, more fundamental
matters were at stake than deliberation, choice and decision
making. Teacher knowledge, rather than teacher deliberation or
disciplinary knowledge taught to teachers, was the critical point.
What teachers did depended on what they knew as persons, more
than it did on their deliberative decision making steps or on the
knowledge they were taught in teacher development exercises. The
basic insight that teacher knowledge overrides and is more
important than knowledge-for-teachers is behind everything else
in a narrative approach to teacher education and development.
4.1.2.3. Personal practical knowledge conceptual stage. Working in
the teacher deliberation and choice project, Elbaz (1983) developed
a widely referenced concept of teachers’ practical knowledge.
Practical knowledge refers to the practical things that teachers
 S. Xu, F.M. Connelly / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227
know through their teaching experience. The critical feature of
teacher knowledge is that it is tacit (Polanyi, 1958), an idea which
led to expansion of the concept of practical knowledge to the idea of
personal practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Dienes,
1982). The critical feature of teachers’ personal practical knowledge
is that it is, following Polanyi (1958), tacit. This means that teacher
knowledge is not organised and coded according to any of the
traditional disciplinary and cognitive ways of organizing knowl-
edge and skills. People are mostly unaware of this knowledge
which carries cultural and social qualities originating in a person’s
life narrative. Tacit knowledge refers to the background knowledge
people carry in their minds and bodies, a form of personal practical
knowledge that governs how people approach the practical world.
Disciplinary knowledge is subsumed under tacit knowledge. Rather
than logically determined practical application, tacit knowledge is
expressed variably, depending on the practical situation.
This helps explain why educational reforms are so difficult to
achieve. Tacit teacher knowledge overwhelms prescribed policies
and memorised formal knowledge as teachers work with students.
Teacher knowledge is more critical than knowledge-for-teachers.
Though teachers may not be able to say what they know, they feel –
emotionally, morally, and aesthetically – their knowledge. This
knowledge is central to what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) call
‘‘metaphors to live by’’ and which Johnson (1987) later called ‘‘the
body in the mind.’’
As such teacher knowledge is at the heart of teacher identity
(Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). On these grounds it is clear that what
is taught to teachers goes beyond testable lists of intended
outcomes and is, in the end, a small part, perhaps even a ‘‘mis-
educative’’ part, of what teachers know. To return to Eisner, at the
very least teacher knowledge consists of the hidden and null
curricular knowledge associated with the intended curriculum of
knowledge-for-teachers. But, more than this teacher knowledge is
a holistic rendering of teacher experience in and out of teacher
education settings. A teacher education reformer may think that
what is intended is value neutral and therefore easily learned by
teachers. But teacher knowledge is personal knowledge and
anything taught to teachers as knowledge-for-teachers becomes
teacher knowledge and touches the very heart of who teachers are
by touching their identity as teachers and as persons. This is one of
the reasons why teacher education reforms which divorce educa-
tion from life may, as Valenzuela says of disenfranchised groups, be
harmful rather than helpful. Teacher identity expresses personal
practical knowledge gained in experience, learned contextually,
and expressed on landscapes of practice.
4.1.2.4. Professional knowledge landscapes conceptual stage. A poten-
tial misunderstanding about teacher knowledge flows from the idea
that teacher knowledge is tacit, personal and practical. It may be
argued that such knowledge is idiosyncratic, and that paying atten-
tion to it ignores the cultural and social setting in which people work.
But sociality is a key part of one’s knowledge. The idea of professional
knowledge landscapes (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995) is designed to
recognise sociality in teacher knowledge. This term focuses on how
specific environments in which teachers work serve as contexts
which influence the development of personal practical knowledge
and, reciprocally, of how this knowledge shapes teacher’s response to
their environments.
When educational reforms are imposed on educational systems
they enter a landscape with its own narrative qualities. These
qualities, as with teacher’s personal practical knowledge, need to be
taken into account in planning for teacher development.
4.1.2.5. Narrative intersection of ways of knowing and being
conceptual stage. The third major stage in the development of the
idea of narrative as phenomenon is an outgrowth of student work
223
on changing, multicultural, landscapes, (e.g. Conle et al., 2000; He,
2003; Li, 2002; Phillion, 2002; Phillion, He, & Connelly, 2005). The
idea of interaction of ways of knowing and being is developed in
Xu’s (2006) work with Chinese immigrants in Toronto. In this work
the idea of landscape takes on a global quality (Connelly & Xu,
2008a, b, in press). We focused on changing landscapes in Toronto
as immigrant newcomer cultures changed Toronto. What is
significant in this work is that Xu reconceptualises the immigrant
process from one of cultural adaptation of immigrant narratives to
one of cultural intersection of immigrant and host narratives. Using
Deweyan and Confucian ideas Xu conceptualises the meeting of
cultures as the interaction of different narratives of knowing and
being. In this narrative view, teacher development consists of
working with teacher narratives in interaction with student
narratives. The ideas are central to the immense potential of
community development as a framework for conceptutalizing
teacher development noted in the Postscript.
To summarise, narrative as phenomenon is one of the broad
frames within which we understand teacher development and its
place in educational reform. In the preceding section we briefly
outlined the intellectual resources and four main stages in the
development of the idea: origins, personal practical knowledge,
teachers’ knowledge landscapes, and narrative intersection of ways
of knowing and being. It is important to note that each of these
constructs is a narrative construct; they are ways of thinking about
the world in narrative, storied, terms. Let us now briefly outline the
second part of narrative inquiry, narrative as method. Once narra-
tive as phenomenon and narrative as method is built up, we will be
in a position to explore the uses of narrative inquiry for foreign
language teacher development.
4.2. Narrative as method: narrative as a way of thinking
One could study the details of how to do a narrative inquiry, and
of how to apply narrative inquiry to teacher development, and still
miss the fundamental point. Anyone interested in using narrative to
study foreign language teacher education needs to begin by learning
to think narratively (Connelly & Clandinin, 2005). Their first task in an
inquiry is to imagine their topic or phenomenon as an ongoing life
space. If, for example, we decide to study science achievement we
first need to put aside thoughts of science concepts and testing
methods and think of science learning as a small part of a student’s
classroom life. Imagining this life space takes precedence over the
details of knowledge and skills lists teachers are often taught. But
what does this mean? How can such a space be imagined? We now
turn to ways of imagining a life space.
4.2.1. A three dimensional life space
Drawing on Dewey’s idea of an experience as being the inter-
section of a personal and social dimension over time, and using
Schwab’s practical notion, we think of a life space as a three
dimensional space (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) defined by
a temporal continuum (past–present–future), a personal–social
continuum, and place. The concepts are simple. But bringing these
concepts to life in actual research and teacher development settings
is difficult. They must all be taken into account at the same time. Let
us briefly describe each of these in turn. As readers think along with
us try to imagine the life space as a sphere within which life
activities take place.
4.2.2. Temporal continuum
Things tend to be studied, and seen, as fixed in time. In teacher
development teachers are said to be this way or that way; the
environment is this way or that way; students have these abilities or
those abilities. But, thinking narratively means that everything
needs to be seen in temporal flow. Narrative phenomena are not
224 S. Xu, F.M. Connelly / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227

seen as existing in the here and now but, rather, are seen as flowing achievement, the space dimension means that we cannot simply
out of the past and into the future, as we observe. Our imaginary measure science achievement. We need to ask questions about
sphere is always moving and floats through time. Xu (2006) uses students’ experience of science at home, in the community, with
a beautiful explanation drawn from Tu (1985), speaking of the parents and with other students.
Chinese painter Tao Chi (1641–1717), in which mountains are said to Let us return one last time to our imaginary life space sphere.
flow like rivers. The proper way of looking at mountains is to see Anything of interest in this sphere – science achievement or English
them as ocean waves frosen in time (Tu, 1985). Traditionally, as a foreign language teacher development – is now an immensely
researchers see a mountain as a mountain. A narrative inquirer sees complicated, difficult to pin down, phenomenon. The sphere flows
the mountain as ocean waves, frosen in time, ultimately flowing like temporally, like a river, changing as we watch it. Events and persons
a river. Narrativists even apply this notion to the physical environ- in the sphere interact personally and socially, in different ways at
ment so that a school is not seen as a particular fixed structure but as different places, and at different times. Coming to grips with this life
a building with its own narrative history and future. space is the task of a narrative approach to teacher development.
Let us return to this flowing sphere and imagine a teacher inside To summarise, narrative as method requires that teacher
the sphere. development begin by imagining life spaces. These spaces vary over
time with the interactions of teachers’ personal and social knowl-
4.2.3. Personal–social continuum edge, and with place. These life spaces are fluid and dynamic and
A mistaken notion in narrative inquiry is that since it focuses on change as we work with them. A narrative approach to teacher
the personal it is therefore idiosyncratic and unique. But persons are development is something like a tai-chi movement where one
always in social interaction. The personal conditions of feelings, gains balance by harmonizing and responding to shifting, changing,
hopes, desires, aesthetic reactions and moral outlooks are always in factors and forces.
interaction with a landscape environment consisting of people,
4.3. What is narrative inquiry? A summary
policies, things and programmes. It is impossible to understand
a teacher’s professional development in this landscape without
Let us briefly summarise what we have said. Teacher develop-
understanding his/her personal qualities. Likewise, it is impossible
ment has a pivotal role in all forms of educational reform. A narrative
to understand this person without understanding the social land-
inquiry approach to English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher
scape contexts within which the person works. Narrative inquirers
education and development entails consideration of narrative as
are required, when thinking of a life space, to think about persons in
phenomenon and narrative as method. Narrative as phenomenon
both personal and social dimensions; to think of them as persons
entails three aspects: teachers’ personal practical knowledge, in
with feelings, emotional and aesthetic reactions, and who are always
which the personal and experiential is important; teachers’ profes-
interacting with other people and things in a larger environment.
sional knowledge landscapes, in which the context in which teachers
Context and environment are crucial. This imagining is difficult to do
work is important; and the intersection of different ways of knowing
because it means that in a teacher development setting one cannot
and being, in which the intersection of cultural narratives is impor-
focus merely on what it is that one wants developed but, rather, one
tant. Narrative as method is a way of thinking about phenomena as
needs to take into account, at one and the same time, teachers’
a life space consisting of the dimensions of time, the personal–social,
personal qualities, their social qualities, the environment and
and place. All of these matters play a role in thinking through
teacher interactions between the personal and the social. A narrative
a productive teacher education and development exercise.
inquirer sees the personal as an expression of the social and, vice
Let us now turn to the consequences and possibilities of this
versa, the social as an expression of the personal.
view of narrative inquiry for planning and researching English as
Moreover, these qualities, the personal, the social, and their
a foreign language (EFL) teacher education and development. We
interaction, need to be thought of temporally, that is, as shifting and
remind readers that though the occasion that gave rise to this paper
changing over time. A flowing, changing, life space means that
was EFL teacher education and development in China, we believe
minute by minute, day by day, teachers are in continual personal
that our theoretical discussion, and the considerations discussed
and social interaction. Expressions of the self relative to the
below, applies in other settings and to other subjects.
teaching of, say, English as a foreign language, change depending on
the dynamics of the life space. Experience changes teacher identity,
5. Considerations in a narrative approach to teacher
changes the social landscape, and changes their interaction.
education and development
Nothing stands still in Confucian continuity of being (Tu, 1985).
Once again, let us return to the person in our flowing sphere and
We have presented two main threads in this paper: the place of
imagine that the sphere exists somewhere, or in a sequence of
teacher development in educational reform, and narrative inquiry
somewheres.
as a way of thinking about teacher education and development. In
this section these threads come together as we outline a set of
4.2.4. Place
practical things to consider when taking a narrative approach to
The first two dimensions of the three dimensional narrative
foreign language teacher education and development. The
inquiry life space are derived from Dewey’s concept of an experi-
considerations follow directly from the more general discussion of
ence. Schwab’s practical point leads to the idea of place. The specific
school reform and narrative inquiry presented in the paper. We
places where phenomena unfold make a difference. A person may
present these considerations with a minimum of discussion on the
be one kind of person in the classroom, another kind of person in
assumption that the paper provides adequate background.
the staffroom with other teachers, still another kind of person in
Following the outline of this paper, there are three basic things to
the principal’s office, and yet another kind of person meeting with
consider: educational reform, narrative inquiry as phenomenon,
parents during parent/teacher interviews. Place is a determining
and narrative inquiry as method.
factor and changes a teacher’s identity as she/he moves from place
to place. Teaching in a North American school, where low socio- 5.1. Reform considerations
economic conditions may contribute to low achievement, and
where safety in the school and community may be a public concern 5.1.1. First, teacher development is part of educational reform
is different than teaching in a wealthy private school surrounded by Teacher education and development is best thought of as part of
fences, gates and guards. To return to our example of science a larger organic whole consisting of other reform processes: policy
 S. Xu, F.M. Connelly / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227
development, curriculum development, and achievement testing
and accountability. All these matters bear on a teacher’s life space
and need to be taken into account as specific reforms are trans-
mitted in professional development settings. The point of this
observation for China is that Chinese EFL teacher educators and
developers need to retain their traditional heritage view of holistic
thinking and traditional educational practice that works for
Chinese contexts. Marton, Wen, and Wong (1995), for example,
study Chinese students’ interpretation of the roles of memorisation
and understanding in their study habits and how repetition and
variation play a role. Following their line of thinking, those who,
from an outsider’s point of view, think that Chinese education
involves excessive amounts of memorisation may want to rethink
the process as one of the growth of understanding in variable
situations and circumstances. Chinese education reformers in the
19th century had made efforts to modernise China’s educational
system by adopting American models. Tao Xingzhi (1891–1946),
after studying at Columbia School of Education during 1916–1917,
returned to China and became an influential educator in Chinese
history. He synthesised Deweyian and Chinese approaches to
progressive education based on his experimental study and anal-
ysis of Chinese life and society. Current Chinese educational
reformers and teacher educators and developers may want to
revisit the paths paved by Tao and other earlier educators who
attempted to modernise China’s education. They may need to keep
the larger society, the organic whole, in mind and learn to work in
harmony with the tradition in their efforts to modernise and
internationalise China’s educational system.
5.1.2. Second, teachers do many things
Teacher educators and teacher developers are inevitably so
focused on the particular things they wish to teach teachers that
they often forget that teachers’ life space is infinitely more complex
than are the things they are asked to do in teacher education and
professional development settings. Teacher educators and teacher
developers are often disappointed at teachers’ responses because
teachers have to fit knowledge-for-teachers into life spaces with
many other demands. Zou (2008), for example, finds in his study
that Chinese pre-service EFL teachers lack professionalism and the
knowledge base needed for the teaching profession. However, life
and education in the form of professional development go together.
The point of this observation is that foreign language teacher
educators and developers need to assess life spaces and listen to
teachers in teacher education and teacher development settings.
5.2. Narrative inquiry as phenomenon considerations
5.2.1. First, begin at home in China
Language teachers in China have ways of knowing and being, as
do teachers everywhere, that reflect their personal narrative
histories and the cultural narrative history of China. These ways of
knowing and being reach back to ancient Chinese traditions of
thought and need to be the starting point for teacher education and
development. We do not mean to suggest that other ways of
knowing and being should not be learned from abroad and taught
to teachers. But the starting point needs to be the deeply embedded
cultural narrative strengths that teachers and teacher educators
already have. The point of this observation is that foreign language
teacher educators and developers need to study, value, and build
upon indigenous traditions and knowledge, and carefully preserve
basic cultural attitudes, values and ways of thinking. There is
a Western tradition of self-criticism, of holding assumptions,
values, and starting points up for scrutiny. But this is not the central
tension underlying this paper. This tension, as we earlier said, is
the tension created by imported outside ways of knowing and
being meeting inside ways of knowing and being. The colonialist
225
potential of the Westernisation of Chinese EFL teacher education
and development is, as Wu (2007) argues, too strong to be ignored.
This is not only a problem for China. It is a global problem as
Western intellectual colonialism in education threatens to wipe out
educational traditions in other parts of the world. For an excellent
review of this matter see Anderson-Levitt (2008).
5.2.2. Second, begin with teacher knowledge
All learning is on a narrative continuum. When something new
is taught, it is learned in the context of what the learner already
knows. Chinese teachers are not blank slates when entering an
English as a foreign language teacher development setting. They
have experiential knowledge of children, families, schools,
communities and Chinese cultural history; and they have experi-
ential knowledge of teaching particular subject matters to learners
of different ability levels. This knowledge needs to be respected and
built upon, not dismissed or, worse, treated as an impediment. By
not acknowledging what teachers and student teachers know,
teacher educators may act with what Mark Johnson (1987) calls
a God’s eye view, one in which the teacher is assumed to know
nothing while the teacher educator knows all. The point of this
observation is that foreign language teacher educators and devel-
opers need to assess, and build on, teacher’s prior knowledge. This
is not, of course, a new insight. An excellent review of literature
relevant to this point is presented by Craig and Ross (2008).
5.2.3. Third, teacher education and development is an education in
teacher identity
Because teacher knowledge is tacit and embodies all that
a teacher has experienced, teacher knowledge and teacher identity
are closely connected. The knowledge-for-teachers taught to
teachers is never merely an increment in technological, conceptual
or skill knowledge but reaches to the heart of how teachers expe-
rience themselves and their teaching situation. The point of this
observation for Chinese EFL teacher educators and developers is to
think of their teaching as a transaction with other persons; not an
action upon other persons. As noted earlier in this paper, when
knowledge-for-teachers is treated by policy makers and others as
separate from teacher knowledge there is the potential for
a rupture of education from life.
5.2.4. Fourth, imagine the flow of a life space
Teacher knowledge and teacher identity unfold on teachers’
professional knowledge landscapes and do so as ever growing, ever
changing, narrative constructions. Life and education are mirror
images. New knowledge and skills in a teacher education and
development programme are not bricks in a knowledge edifice;
they are enrichment for a flowing river of life. Everything taught
enters this flow and is changed as it joins in what teachers know
and do. The first point of this observation for foreign language
teacher educators and developers is that they need to imagine
themselves entering into, and working within, the life flow of their
students. Teachers of teachers are, conceptually, most educative
when imagining, and acting, co-operatively with their in-service
and pre-service teachers. A second point is that teachers need to
think the same way about their students in schools.
5.3. Narrative inquiry as method considerations
5.3.1. First, the spirit of thinking narratively
Narrative inquiry is first and foremost a way of thinking about
life and research. Thinking narratively means using one’s mind to
imagine life spaces that flow in time, that consist of personal and
social interactions, and that move from place to place. The point of
this observation is that EFL teacher educators and developers need
to pay as much attention to imagining the characteristics and
226 S. Xu, F.M. Connelly / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 219–227
qualities of the life spaces of the teachers they teach as they do in
thinking about the details of language and language teaching. This
may create certain tensions for the teacher educators because of
their level of specialisation. The demands of specialisation need to
be shared with the broader demands of the life space.
5.3.2. Second, the spirit of inquiry versus an attitude of certainty
A corollary to the idea of the narrative inquiry spirit is that
teaching and learning situations, like research settings, are places of
inquiry, not libraries of certainty. EFL teacher educators and
developers are inquirers and co-learners with their in-service and
pre-service teachers. The teachers they teach are likely to be more
knowledgeable than they in the things that matter in the life space.
Teacher educators and developers may have limited experience
with different learners, schools, communities, cultures, and all the
educational things that make up the teachers’ life space. What
teacher educators do know, is a specialised field of English as
a foreign or second language education research and theory and
how best to teach particular topics. The point of this observation is
that EFL teacher educators and developers need to be humble in the
face of teacher knowledge, rather than certain about what it is they
have to teach teachers. Often, when teacher educators and teachers
meet in professional development settings, each has important
knowledge spheres that need recognition by the other. It is
important that teacher educators acknowledge and respect teacher
knowledge.
5.3.3. Third, teacher education and development is life-long
The idea of a life space means that teacher education and
development occurs on a flowing temporal, life-long, continuum of
experience. From this point of view, the greatest teacher educator is
daily, practical, life experience and reflection on it. The impact of
pre-service teacher education and of teacher development work-
shop and education programmes, is, while important, only a small
part of teacher development. The point of this observation is that
foreign language teacher educators and developers need to focus
on teacher narratives of experience, drawing on them as a key
resource in foreign language teacher education. Craig’s (2003a)
work demonstrates the power and relevance of teacher narratives
to ideas and practices advanced in school reforms.
5.3.4. Fourth, teacher education takes place relationally
English as a foreign language teacher educators and teacher
developers sometimes focus on the logical and conceptual clarity of
the content taught to teachers, treating it as if it had a kind of
technical perfection in and of itself, the knowledge of which can be
tested (Li, 2006). In this they reflect certain Western reform strat-
egies that separate life and education. But teaching is a relationship
activity and what is taught needs to be thought of in terms of
teaching/learning relationships rather than as discrete units of
knowledge transported from teacher educator to teacher and from
teacher to student. The point of this observation is that foreign
language teaching/learning situations need to be thought of as the
intersection of teacher educator and teacher narratives of experi-
ence. Both bring an experiential and conceptual history to their
encounter.
5.3.5. Fifth, teacher education takes place someplace
Much research, and even much teaching, ignore or attempt to
overcome the practical limitations of place. Researchers and
teacher educators often try to be abstract and theoretical as if what
they had to say applied everywhere. But place matters and influ-
ences everything one thinks and does in a life space. The point is
that place needs to be carefully noted in English as a foreign
language teacher education and development. Teaching teachers of
English as a foreign language in a workplace environment such as
the premises of an international company is different from teaching
in a Chinese graduate school setting. Similarly, teaching in rural
Northwest China is different from teaching in a major central city.
In effect, whatever is developed by policy makers in a central
location needs to be adapted locally.
6. Postscript
6.1. Community development: possibilities at the intersection of
ways of knowing and being
One of the commonplaces of language education is that language
is a harbinger of culture. Language and culture are closely inter-
twined and the meaningful learning of a language constitutes the
learning of a culture. All language learning, then, has features and
qualities such as those described above with newcomer Chinese
families in Toronto (Xu, 2006). Xu’s (2006) concept of family narra-
tives and the ways of knowing and being brought by Chinese families
to Canada, and through which they enter and interact with teachers
and others in the school community setting, is relevant to the
learning of a language. On these grounds teaching is not only
embedded in local communities, it is embedded in the narrative,
cultural, histories of the students taught. Foreign language teacher
development is narrative community development in the broadest,
global, sense. Policy makers, government officials, researchers and
teacher educators are involved with the making of world cultural
narratives through the mutual learning that takes place as different
ways of knowing and being come together in language teaching and
learning. Foreign language teacher development in the context of
local and global community development is world making. A
narrative approach to foreign language teacher development has the
potential and power to help shape global values on the contributions
and gifts that cultures have for one another.
Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledge that an early version of this
article was published in Chinese in Beijing University Education
Review, 6(1), 51–69, 2008.
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