Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Studies

First Advisor

Kristin Harbour

Abstract

Schaefer and Clandinin (2019) call for teacher educators to attend to how early career teachers compose and sustain their stories to live by as they enter the profession. Responding to this call, this narrative inquiry explored how five teacher candidates made meaning of lived experiences (Dewey, 1938/1998) in ways that contributed to their choice to enroll in a traditional undergraduate teacher education program at a public university in the southeastern United States. The purpose of this study was to create inquiry spaces with teacher candidates where they could re-tell and re-compose stories of becoming teachers in ways that might sustain them in their lives as educators. Guided by Clandinin’s (2016) narrative inquiry methodology, I worked alongside co-researchers who were first-year teacher candidates representing five different programs of study. Over four months, we engaged in sustained relational meetings and co-composed research texts that attended to lived experiences shaping decisions to pursue teaching. Narrative accounts presented two resonant threads. The first thread, teaching is all about the children, reflects how teachers support students in becoming teachers by shaping a sense of purpose (MacIntyre, 2007) within the practice of teaching. The second thread, familial narratives shaping dispositions, illustrates how family experiences shaped dispositions (Bourdieu, 1977; 1986) toward teaching. This study contributes to literature on teacher becoming by offering narrative insights beyond motivation frameworks. Implications suggest that creating inquiry spaces can support teacher candidates in making meaning of their lived experiences in ways that may sustain them in their lives as educators.

Rights

©2026, Jonathan Ray Dillensnyder

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