The goal of this year’s collection of pedagogical narratives told by early childhood practitioners is to prompt conversations about the value of linking children’s literacy-rich experiences across media types. Literacy is traditionally connected to books, like children’s literature, yet this year’s articles address the broader concept of how teachers use a range of literacy practices and storytelling media for and by children. An expansive view of literacies means that teachers understand that children become fully literate by learning how to engage critically and create their own stories and other texts across various media types, including books, oral storytelling, video and film, online content, and a range of visual and printed sources. 

Teachers of young children have a particular responsibility to carefully curate literacy selections that reflect children’s real-world experiences and their curiosities in or outside the classroom or other settings for learning. As early childhood education professionals, the texts we provide children give them some of their first access to other perspectives, or what Rudine Sims Bishop evocatively called the windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors to other worlds (1990). Thus, an intentional and critical approach to selecting texts enhances literacy, gives greater meaning and impact to shared stories, and empowers children to advocate for themselves and others. As Wright and Counsell state, “Stories of human events and the human condition are not simply facts. Literature does more than change minds; it changes hearts. And people with changed hearts are people who can move the world” (2018, 74).  

Defining Teacher Research and the Pedagogical Narrative 

What exactly do we mean by teacher research and the pedagogical narrative? To begin, we provide this definition for teacher research, which is our underlying methodology and the compass for Voices of Practitioners: Teacher research is a form of educational research that centers the voices and knowledge creation of educators who are looking critically at their everyday practices in classrooms or other educational spaces. Connected to action research and its cycle of improvement through practical action, the goal of teacher research is to examine what is, imagine alternatives, undertake cycles of change, and share these results with others to build our collective knowledge about teaching, learning, and children’s development (Meier & Henderson 2007; Henderson 2012; Stremmel 2012).  

To conduct teacher research, teachers begin by posing authentic questions about their own practice, then systematically plan and undertake a process of data collection, analysis, and presentation of findings (Meier & Henderson 2007). Teacher research is often collaborative, yet it provides pathways for individual teachers to learn new knowledge and shift their pedagogical practice. At the same time, it has a public element as a form of research. As research, it contributes to our profession and to the broader knowledge base that we share through the publicly accessible catalog of peer-reviewed educational literature regarding children, teaching, and learning. Overall, teacher research is a methodology that recognizes that teachers, through their daily work with and for children and families, are in a uniquely powerful location for uncovering new wisdom, which is relevant to what John Dewey understood as the discipline or “science” of education (1933, 1938). Specifically, Dewey writes about the teacher’s central role as the holder of practical knowledge, which must be fully integrated with the theoretical. Within that framing, he describes the importance of teachers engaging in ongoing reflective practice so that education will remain a discipline based on a scientific or empirical approach.  

We have seen in our practice with teacher research that the narrative genre provides unparalleled accessibility for all teachers to share their stories of practice. In early childhood, we often grapple with how to make knowledge and learning inclusive to all. In addition to our six pedagogical narratives described in greater detail below, this year’s issue includes two full-length articles, one by Maleka Donaldson and the other coauthored by Debra Murphy and colleagues, a group of educators who have been Debra's students. In tune with our turn toward the narrative in teacher research, Donaldson and Murphy and colleagues use a strong narrative approach in their writing. Thus, with these two articles and our collection of shorter teacher narratives, we provide evidence that the pedagogical narrative offers a welcoming entry point for inquiry because storytelling is one of the most natural and human ways to share knowledge (Bruner 1996).  

Amplifying teachers’ trustworthy stories based on their direct classroom practices removes many of the gatekeeping structures—such as academic jargon and rigid positivist research methodologies—that often devalue teachers’ insights and silence young children’s voices. Hearing teachers’ stories also hones our curiosity and interest so that we can look for teachers’ stories in more places, creating ripple effects of transformative dialogues as we engage in our many roles and relationships within early childhood.  

For educators who wish to examine their work carefully to continually improve their teaching, sharing pedagogical narratives with other educators can play a liberatory role, opening up new discourse for understanding how we teach and how young children learn. Pedagogical narratives serve at least four transformative roles in teacher inquiry: 

1. Narratives are tools for reflection. 
2. Narratives help shape teachers’ professional identities. 
3. Narratives amplify children’s voices. 
4. Narratives are an accessible and inviting genre for inquiry. 

A story is an invitation to engage. When we hear another teacher encounter a knot or challenge in their practice, we can learn how they worked through the tension and moved to a place of practice more aligned with their hopes and values. In this spirit, we invited early childhood professionals to share teacher research narratives exploring inquiry-based experiences with children’s literature or other forms of quality media that have significantly influenced their work with children.  

We received many strong proposals for the pedagogical narrative element of this issue, and they provide a range of examples of how children’s literature and other media draw upon the power of stories, art, and imagination to expand possibilities for how we teach and how children learn and develop. As a teacher research journal, Voices of Practitioners aims to create a space for practitioners to share their inquiry. Our yearly initiative around teachers’ stories began in 2020, and we have been validated to see how this effort to highlight new voices, most of which belong to those working directly with young children, has built a new space to highlight the pedagogical narrative.  

Preview of This Year’s Pedagogical Narratives 

Pedagogical narratives show that learning is all about change. The stories here highlight how teachers and children used diverse literacies and storytelling to shift perspectives and strengthen classroom and community connections. As teacher researchers and educators, we have seen how inquiry becomes second nature for teachers when they engage regularly. Pedagogical narratives offer a natural way to make reflection a regular part of teaching, helping us become more intentional in our work. By connecting vignettes over time, these stories reveal new teaching insights. This year’s collection of narratives touches on key themes like connections within a community of learners, building empathy, evolving classroom dynamics, and reflective inquiry. Here are some highlights from the six narratives we feature this year. 

Mickey Willis and Amanda Lautenbach describe how literature-based project work extended children’s inquiry over time and deepened relationships and connections in the classroom. This piece illustrates how a child-negotiated curriculum process puts the community of children and families at the center of the curriculum.  

Kiyomi Umezawa and Emiko Kurosawa Arakaki explore how child-created texts enacted through puppetry nurtured preschoolers’ social and emotional development. Their collaborative research and writing allowed the pair to reflect deeply on their shared experiences and identities as recent immigrants to Hawaiʻi and their common cultural and linguistic wealth.  

Vaidehi Desai and Maggie Oliver take a deep dive into the interplay of traditional and multimodal multiliteracies within an emergent curricular setting. Their narrative considers how children’s interests can lead to deep conversations about relationships and identity. 

Emily Sturt describes how children’s books can support children through the trauma of loss within a public school pre-K inclusion setting. The examples in this piece share insight into how a teacher navigates very personal and challenging moments for children and families, moments with which fellow educators will likely resonate and empathize.  

Elise Pennington and Leah Waldo look at how a music curriculum based on children’s literature can help unhoused mothers and their children find connection and comfort in the stories and songs shared in a museum-based program. In the article, Pennington draws on her own positionality as an adoptive mother of children who themselves had experienced trauma. 

Andrea Sanchez looks at the children’s book Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales, with her classroom of primarily White children and explores how sharing this book with the children over a long stretch deepened their ability to understand and appreciate other ways of being and interacting. She draws on her own positionality as a Latina as she makes this inquiry.  

Conclusion 

Throughout the history of Voices of Practitioners, with its first article that appeared in Young Children in 2004 through a range of initiatives and approaches, we have often emphasized forms of teacher research that draw on narrative inquiry. Over the past four years, through this new initiative that emphasizes a yearly call for teacher narratives around a designated theme, we have begun to weave a new cloth made up of the threads of these pedagogical narratives. Our efforts through this journal and your efforts by reading and sharing these articles, applying these teachers’ ideas, and conducting your own teacher research are part of a great metaphorical loom whose warp and weft extend well beyond individual classrooms and into the broader early childhood community. These stories give a new sense of direction that allows us to move into the future with a stronger focus on equity, provide a more welcoming space for new authors to share their work, and depict a more inclusive view of pedagogy, children, and communities. 

We are grateful to be able to continually collect the stories that teachers, in their honest, diligent creativity, share with us in the pages of this publication. These stories have ripple effects far beyond the settings where they originally unfolded. They recount and inspire our dedication to this work, and they imbue it with a meaning and a hope that inspire us to move confidently and joyfully into the new day ahead. As you read these stories, we hope that you are able to place them in conversation with your own. We wonder: Where do you see your classroom, your children, yourself? Engaging with each of these stories is a gift, and maybe—just maybe!—next year you’ll do us the honor of allowing us to share yours within these pages as well. We’ll be waiting! 

Photographs: table of contents, courtesy of Vaidehi Desai and Margaret Oliver; above, courtesy of Mickey Willis and Amanda Lautenbach
Copyright © 2024 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at NAEYC.org/resources/permissions.

References

Bruner, J.S. 1996. The Culture of Education. Harvard University Press. 

Dewey, J. [1933] 1985. How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Heath.  

Dewey, J. [1938] 1997. Experience and Education. Scribner.  

Henderson, B. 2012. “Teacher Research: Effects on Professional Development and Professional Identity." Voices of Practitioners 7 (1): 1–6. 

Meier, D.R., & B. Henderson. 2007. Learning from Young Children in the Classroom: The Art and Science of Teacher Research. Teachers College Press. 

Sims Bishop, R. 1990. “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books from the Classroom 6 (3): ix‒xi.

Stremmel, A. 2012. “The Value of Teacher Research: Nurturing Professional and Personal Growth Through Inquiry." Voices of Practitioners 2 (3): 1–9.  

Wright, B.L, & S. Counsell. 2018. The Brilliance of Black Boys: Cultivating School Success in the Early Grades. Teachers College Press.