“I’m just becoming okay with being incomplete”: how an international, multiracial teacher research group pursued a nonexclusionary whole through storywork

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate how storytelling and storylistening within a teacher inquiry group (TIG) can serve as a relational methodology for professional transformation and resistance. Focusing on the linguistic and ethical practices that allow stories to cascade − opening space for vulnerability, reframing and shared incompletion − it highlights how teachers co-construct nonexclusionary educational possibilities. By linking storywork with discourse analysis, this study provides insight into how teachers navigate political repression and institutional constraint. The findings contribute to teacher education by emphasizing the importance of dialogic spaces that privilege listening, uncertainty and relational learning over scripted expertise or performative mastery. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a hybrid methodology called “cascading stories,” which blends Discourse Analysis Beyond the Speech Event with Black and Indigenous storywork traditions. Drawing from a yearlong participatory inquiry group of early-career teachers, the analysis focuses on one conversation where storytelling generated pedagogical and relational shifts. Using discourse analysis, the study tracks narrating events − such as stance-taking, voicing and reframing − while storywork attends to the ethical, affective and relational work of storytelling. Together, these approaches reveal how stories function not just as reflection, but as collective acts of resistance, vulnerability and worldmaking within politically restrictive educational contexts. Findings This study found that cascading stories − where one teacher’s narrative is picked up, revoiced and extended by another − created openings for ethical reflection and pedagogical transformation. Rather than offering solutions, these stories invited questions, surfaced vulnerability and challenged institutional norms. Through specific linguistic moves such as authenticity claims and discursive reframing, teachers built a shared space for becoming incomplete − embracing uncertainty as a resource for collective growth. These practices shifted teachers’ relationships to students, each other and their roles, demonstrating how storywork in TIGs can foster nonexclusionary, relational and justice-oriented learning environments. Practical implications This study offers a model for teacher education that centers relational storywork over prescriptive strategies. In restrictive political climates, where equity discussions are silenced, TIGs grounded in storytelling can become fugitive spaces for healing, reflection and resistance. Rather than focusing on what teachers should say, facilitators should listen for what teachers’ stories are already asking. By attending to linguistic practices − such as vulnerability, revoicing and reframing − educators can cultivate spaces of collective learning, shared incompletion and ethical responsiveness that support the development of liberatory, nonexclusionary classrooms. Originality/value This study introduces “cascading stories” as a hybrid methodology that combines discourse analysis and Black/Indigenous storywork to examine teacher transformation through storytelling. It contributes a new framework for understanding how teachers use language to invite uncertainty, relational attunement and co-construction within politically charged environments. By naming “becoming incomplete” as a collective pedagogical practice, this study challenges dominant models of teacher development rooted in certainty and control. It offers practical insight into how TIGs can function as undercommons − generative spaces where vulnerability becomes a method, story becomes resistance and the work of teaching becomes a shared, unfolding process.