Listening to Teachers' Stories: Are We Sitting Too Comfortably?.

Teachers' narratives have been accessed as a privileged resource by both educational researchers and teacher educators. However, an analysis of the structure and language of my own narratives of teaching indicated that they were heavily influenced by identityconsiderations,and that I used autobiographical conventions to construct a self-image as a consistentlymoral individual.I argue that teachers' narrative performances compel sympathetic audiences to endorse rather than investigate the identity that the narrator offers. Consequently, such narrative encounters may authorize teachers to use teaching as an opportunity for fulfilling their personal identity projects, and this is not necessarily beneficial for either students or teachers.