Narratives of Professional Learning: Becoming a Teacher and Learning to Teach

Abstract

This paper is about professional learning in the context of becoming a teacher. It presents narrative accounts written by prospective teachers that show how they have created professional knowledge through inquiry. These narrative excerpts present the voices of prospective teachers as they deal with their most pressing issues and concerns, examine prior knowledge in the light of new understandings, and construct new knowledge through the processes of reflection, dialogue and inquiry. The details of the narratives are illustrative of the ways in which these prospective teachers have learned to question the taken-for-granted in their lives, to find patterns and connections, and to think critically and creatively. They show the people and the personalities behind the ideas and the issues, and provide glimpses of these individuals’ personal hopes, beliefs, theories, worldviews, passions and preoccupations. They also provide insights into the processes of creating an ethically-based professional knowledge in teaching that is unique to each individual.

These narrative excerpts were written in the context of a year-long teacher education program in which prospective teachers were enrolled as a cohort in two consecutive courses in the foundations of Education, Teaching, Students, Schools and Systems, and Developing a Philosophy in Teaching. These prospective secondary school teachers specialized in the teaching of two subjects, one of which they had studied to the level of an advanced degree, and taken a number of university courses in the other. Many of these individuals had spent a number of years pursuing other careers before entering the teacher education program, and consequently brought a range of rich career and life experiences to that setting.