Diversity, equity, and justice are vital focuses in teacher education programs and research. Yet, studies show that as children and families interact with schools their lives are often ignored, silenced, or used to define them as deficit. This paper inquires into the interactions between early career teachers, children, and families. Using a semi-structured interview protocol, we explored the personal and professional situations 20 early career teachers described as shaping the knowledge they draw on in their interactions with families. Thinking narratively with the stories shared by one teacher, we explore the potential of familial and school curriculum-making worlds in teacher education and ways these understandings may open spaces and conversations that strengthen the interactions between early career teachers and families.Les concepts de diversité, d’équité et de justice sont au centre des programmes de formation des maitres et de la recherche en éducation. Or, les recherches démontrent que lorsque les enfants et les familles interagissent avec le milieu scolaire, leur vie familiale est souvent ignorée, passée sous silence ou encore, utilisée pour expliquer leurs déficiences. Cet article s’attarde aux interactions entre les nouveaux enseignants, les enfants et leurs familles. En menant des entrevues semi-structurées auprès de vingt enseignants en début de carrière, nous avons analysé les descriptions des situations personnelles et professionnelles sur lesquelles se basent leurs relations avec les familles. En abordant les anecdotes partagées par un enseignant sous un angle narratif, nous avons exploré le potentiel des univers familial et scolaire dans le contexte d’élaboration d’un programme de formation des maitres. Nous avons cherché des manières dont une compréhension de ce potentiel pourrait ouvrir de nouvelles possibilités et permettre des discussions afin de renforcer les interactions entre les enseignants en début de carrière et les familles

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A variety of online programs, apps, and digital learning management systems currently “provide teachers with a means to more easily communicate and share information with students and parents through discussion forums, social media, videoconferencing, email, grade books, and announcements” (Howell & O’Donnell, 2017, p.28). While technology is often seen as shaping positive shifts in teachers’ and schools’ abilities to communicate with families, we, the five co-researchers in the study Understanding the Interactions Between Early Career Teachers and Families, wondered how early career teachers were experiencing the use of technology to interact with families. During semi-structured interviews with each of the 20 teacher participants, we were awakened, for example, to tensions experienced by many of the teachers when expectations to communicate with families electronically conflicted with their longings for more relational and reciprocal interactions. Yet, we also came to see that the teachers were learning to dwell in these tensions in ways that opened potential for educative (Dewey, 1938) growth and movement toward the kinds of interactions with families they were imagining. This paper takes up technology as one of the resonant threads drawn from and across the teachers’ storied experiences, and inquires narratively into the kinds of generative tensions that many of the teachers were experiencing and drawing on as they imagined increased relational and reciprocal ways of interacting with families, and then moves to wonder how dwelling in these tensions might shape preservice and in-service teacher education.Keywords: Early career teachers; families; technology; interactions; agency

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