Restorying Ourselves: Using Currere to Examine Teachers' Careers

In the post No Child Left Behind climate, many experienced teachers are beginning to think seriously about leaving education for a less stressful career. Recent statistics reveal that fifty percent of new teachers leave the classroom before the end of their fifth year of teaching. Therefore, it is vitally important that experienced teachers remain in the classroom. Professional learning communities, such as the one described in this book, are one method of encouraging teachers to stay in the profession. This book first addresses the causes of teacher attrition, and then describes a study in which teachers wrote their own educational autobiographies using currere, a structured reflection process. Analysis of the data in this qualitative study includes the use of narrative analysis, feminist analysis and hermeneutics. A hermeneutic cycle of data analysis is developed. This book will be especially helpful to school district administrators, K-12 principals and teachers, and those at the university level.