A Narrative Re-Searching for the Practical Identity as a Teacher: Lear’s Approach
Keywords:
higher education, narrative inquiry, practical identity, Jonathan Lear, “thick-thin-thick” process, ethical claimsAbstract
This paper aims to explore and appropriate Lear’s exploration of the Crow Chief Plenty Coups’s stories methodologically in re-search for my practical identity as a teacher. In contrast with the epistemological concerns of narrative inquiry as a methodology in the field of education, Lear’s approach anchors more on axiological discussions that allow me to reclaim the ethical grounds of teaching and hence integrate the virtues to form a more educationally defensible identity as a teacher. Lear shows us the search for meaning involves a “thick-thin-thick” approach. Thinning and thickening processes do not follow a linear model: they can be recursive and intertwined.