Professional Identity and Struggles of Basic Level English Teacher: A Critical Narrative Inquiry

Professional development is a continuous process of learning to empower professional competency and enable teachers to be strong and competent in their professional career. The study critically explores the struggles and professional activities of basic level English teachers in professional development. Critical narrative inquiry has been used in relation to long lived experiences of a participant with a semi – structured telephonic interview. The participant narrates three distinct phases of experiences in teaching profession. The result revealed that participant was innately interested in teaching profession before involvement. But the situated school system discouraged his ideology of teaching profession even he determined to continue his profession involving in different seminars, workshop and study. However, the study further suggests that there is lack of innovating teaching profession from critical perspectives focusing the interactive and transformative environment in classroom. Therefore, the basic level teachers need to re- examine and re – construct the professional activities to address the need, interest and level of learners. Similarly, the study contributes to apply language teaching activities in terms of transformative mood rather than structured model of teaching empowering teachers as an agency.

‘... You feel like the one that got left behind’: a narrative inquiry into the friendships of people who have endured mental health difficulties

Aims: To explore insights between friendship and mental health through a critical narrative inquiry. To conceptualise friendship and inform public health approaches to loneliness and mental health. Method: Seventeen interviews were conducted with middle-age people who had experienced mental health difficulties. Stories were subjected to a narrative analysis and interrogated further using critical theory. Results: Compassion in friendship reduces alterity and loneliness, and results in mutual discovery of dignity in relation to distress and stage of life. This is not achievable in all friendship. Conclusion: The temporary encounter of friendship can provide new bases for authentically relating. Through dignity and authenticity, friendship can contribute to mental health and reduce loneliness. Suggestions are made to inform public health approaches to friendship.

Correction to: A critical narrative inquiry to understand the impacts of an overdose prevention site on the lives of site users

After publication of the original article [1], the authors identified an error in the author name of Marlene Janzen Le Ber. The given name and family name were erroneously transposed.

Engaging Refugee Audiences Through Process and Performance in Multivocal, Community-Based Programs

This chapter explores multivocality, when working with refugees, as an approach to challenge and destabilize homogenizing narratives. Museum as Sanctuary is a long-term program at the Tucson Museum of Art that leverages community partnerships to engage refugee audiences through art-making and in-gallery activities. The author will explore how museums can foster multivocal, community-based programs by creating opportunities for participants to share their opinions, observations, and experiences in response to works of art on view and through their own artistic products. The theories of Trinh T. Minh-ha provide a lens for contextualizing the multivocality that emerges from collaborations and that honors difference, builds comfort, supports individual strengths, and welcomes change. Through a methodological blending of critical narrative inquiry and decolonizing theories, the author examines pedagogical strategies that include performance and process in order to unsettle monolithic ideas to make space for multiplicities.