In this proposed paper the focus will be on this longitudinal research which purpose was to explore, through narrative inquiry, the experiences of early career teachers and how they cope during their first five years of teaching in grades one to ten in Iceland. Understanding the meaning which beginning teachers make of their experiences once they enter their chosen profession, is at the heart of this research. The aim was to create knowledge that would bring to light their learning and development; what hinders and what supports them. Another aim was to examine what kind of support novice teachers need during their early years of teaching. The research evolves around the key questions on

a) how beginning teachers experience their first five years of teaching in Iceland; what their expectations, concerns and dilemmas, joys and difficulties, successes and failures are, how they come to grips with it all; and how they develop their embodied knowledge of creating and managing relationships with students, colleagues and parents, and of creating a classroom community; and

b) how beginning teachers work with their images of the teacher they initially wanted to become; how they create and re-create their images and identity as teachers; and how their personal practical knowledge develops through their first five years of experience in teaching. The study follows the novice teachers closely for their first five years and offers unique insight into our knowledge of teacher learning in the initial years, thus adding to the existing body of knowledge of the development of the beginning teacher. This topic is of social and educational significance to Iceland and adds to the international literature in the field of continuous professional development of early career teachers.

The theoretical framework of this qualitative study was both phenomenology and postmodern theory, and the central analytical perspective was the philosophy of narrative inquiry, which shaped the research methodology and the methods used. Narrartive inquiry has its theoretical roots in the humanities as well as in other fields sometimes under the broad heading of narratology. Connelly and Clandinin, Canadian scholars who have been among the most productive researchers in narrative educational research and writings, claim to be the first to use the term narrative inquiry in the educational research field (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990). The narrative inquiry is both a phenomenon that is studied and a method of study (Connelly and Clandinin, e.g. 1990, 2000, 2006). By using narrtive inquiry the researcher adopts a particular view of human experience. To be exact this approach can be seen as a gateway to the understanding of experience. In my research I draw heavily on Connelly and Clandinin's ideas, terms and definitions on narrative inquiry, especially the term 'personal practical knowledge' (Connelly and Clandinin, e.g. 1990, 2000, 2006). They claim (2000) that this approach requires cooperation between researcher and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus. Narrative inquiry has aspects in common with other types of qualitative inquiry such as the emphasis on the social in ethnography and the use of story in phenomenology. But as mentioned above what makes a narrative inquiry is the simultaneous exploration of what Connelly and Clandinin call the three commonplaces: the temporality, sociality and place – which they say specifies dimensions of an inquiry space; they are the “places” [sic] to direct one’s attention when doing a narrative inquiry.

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