Their Exits and Their Entrances: Stories of Coming and Going from For

This dissertation is a collection of related papers anchored by a narrative inquiry with three former teacher educators in the field. The work explores and maps the educators’ career trajectories within, and across their stories of experience. All participants resigned from their posts in public education within the three years preceding the interviews and exited the field from a public school system in one of the most diverse urban metroplex areas in the United States. The collected ‘stories to leave by’ reveal resonances rooted in the areas of place, community, and identity. The work begins by addressing the lack of literature surrounding the life-cycles of teacher educators in the field and the researcher’s personal experiences and intrigue with the topic, and presents a literary epilogue which contextualizes the structure of the subsequent chapters. Elements from the epilogue are investigated in a scholarly literature review which includes narrative identity, narrative therapy (Adams, Josselson & Lieblich, 2006; Combs & Freedman, 2012; Phipps & Vorster, 2015), and narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Conle, 1996; Craig, 2013, 2014) This paper-based dissertation presents interpreted truths in the “thick” and “thin” participant stories of coming, going and staying in the field. Through narrative interspersion, the researcher presents multiple truths and selves authored by the participants (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Polanco, 2011; Clandinin, 2013a, 2013b; Phipps & Vorster, 2015). The dissertation research ends with the researcher’s reflections on her own journey of re-storied experiences, wonderings, and tensions met and wrestled with during the stages of data collection and interpretation.Curriculum and Instruction, Department o