Narrative: gateway and mirror in teachers’ research training

Abstract

When referring to research, we are not dealing with a transparent concept, but with a cultural and historical construction which is full of images of education, subjects, and contexts, and which calls for specific ways of being a teacher. This article outlines some of the relations between narrative and teacher education, in the context of a research process in which, initially, narrative meant just a part of the methodology, but it gradually transformed the investigation into a polyphonic construction that led to the observation of conditions of possibility for a creative and critical resistance before an instituted imaginary of research, which is governed by a set of hierarchical, competitive, objective, and universal rules. Specifically, we designed a meta-investigative reflection on narrative as a gateway and mirror for teacher education. In this case, language and literature work as the contextual components that allow the identification of the role of specific areas in research training; furthermore, they constitute a favorable field for discrepancy, creativity, and resistance, and for the emergence of possible worlds.