Interactive Narrative Inquiry as an Approach to Self-Study in Language Teacher Education: The Power of Immersion and Interactivity

Abstract

Although self-study practices have become prevalent among researchers within the general teacher education field since the 1990s, language teacher education (LTE) research has yet to witness its equivalence. This paper describes and demonstrates how a TESOL teacher educator adapted an interactive approach to narrative inquiry by designing a dialogic self-study of her professional identity and teaching practices in an MA TESOL program at a private university in South Korea. In so doing, this paper calls for interactive narrative inquiry, suggesting that teacher educators should engage in interaction with their student teachers’ reflective narratives by immersing themselves in the stories being told in the narratives and interacting with their own reflective narratives. As the two sets of narratives interact and intersect with one another, teacher educators may discover insights that may not have been otherwise possible. This paper suggests that immersion and interactivity—key terms underlying the notion of interactive narrative—have powerful implications for self-study methods, narrative inquiry, and teacher education research. © 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.