Narratives of professional development in a teachers’ creative writing group

Abstract

This paper explores teachers’ experiences of professional development in a creative writing group. The data was collected in a teachers’ creative writing group and consist of semi-structured interviews and creative writing assignments. Reflexive thematic analysis and narrative analysis were applied to compose a nonfiction piece that describes the teachers’ experiences of a ‘year of creative writing’. Within the nonfiction piece, four themes were presented as findings of the study: social aspects, personal and emotional aspects, writer identity aspects, and pedagogical aspects. The results suggest that utilising creative writing methods in qualitative research can raise otherwise hidden voices and experiences that may be difficult to express through the academic language.