s Ways With Words has established itself as an inspirational classic in teacher education programs. Although the book is richly evocative as a straightforward account of field research and of an instructional approach derived from that research, it is also more than that: it is the ethnographer's own story. In the present article, the novelistic "narrator's tale" is highlighted and it is argued that the form in which Heath casts her "true story" is as important to understanding the text as the narrated episodes themselves. ETHNOGRAPHlC NARRATIVE, TEACHER EDUCATlONWith respect to research and scholarship into the area of writing, there appears to be a fairly pronounced split between those who refer to themselves as empiricists and social scientists, and those who describe themselves as humanists and literary critics. Our work is of the "bridging" type, constituting a link between social science and literary criticism, and operating at the intersection between these two forms of meaning-making. Our purpose in that part of our work which we're presenting here is to treat Shirley Heath's ethnography, Ways With Words, as a text (Heath 1983). Why would we do this? For two reasons: one theoretical, and the other practical.The practical reason comes from the experience of teaching Ways With Words to students intending to be teachers, and finding very mixed responses to the text. Whereas we, as university teachers, found Heath's book to be delightful, easy to read, rewarding, richly suggestive, and above all, practical, many students, it appeared, found the book frustrating and disappointing. It became clear in discussion that few students were able to see the relevance and applicability of Heath's research for their own work in classrooms. The problem, we hypothesized, might be that our students didn't know how to take Heath because they didn't know how to read her. We wanted to find out what it might be about Heath's text that could explain students' difficulties with it and thereby help us to see how we ought to teach it-how we might be better able to assist students by mediating between them and the text.The second reason for approaching Ways With Words formally and figuratively, rather than substantively and literally, is theoretical. The Suzanne deCastell is Associate Professor, and Tom Walker is Instructor,