Lived Childhood Experiences: Collective Storytelling for Teacher Professional Learning and Social Change

THIS IS THE STORY OF KIDS’ DOMAIN, an early childhood centre in New Zealand. It traces their journey through a four-year action research project shaped around collective storytelling, where the purpose was to understand the self, others and teaching differently. The research was situated within poststructuralist feminist and critical pedagogical theories because these celebrate the multiple and contradictory; value subjectivity; and challenge social inequities, which this project aimed to do. The sharing of stories challenged teachers' perspectives and impacted on both relationships and teaching. Teachers were challenged as they listened to complex and sometimes contradictory storylines, and at times these confronted and disrupted what had previously been taken for granted. This encouraged teachers to reconsider how they might be teachers, and how they might contribute to a more socially just world each day in their own setting.