Conference Paper - Abstract

Meaning making in future-oriented ‘reflective self-portraits’: connecting life experience and commitment to become a teacher

As a teacher-educator, I have designed and implemented a study that mapped how a group of preservice teacher students make meaning in ‘reflective self-portraits’ about being/becoming a teacher. In the first phase of this study the teacher students interviewed each other on their life history, then they shared their narratives and reflected over their life histories in small groups. Sharing the life (his-)story with others brings back memories and in this process of meaning making the narrative identity and values of the person is expressed. The life history was later written down as a future-oriented ‘reflective self-portrait’ about becoming a teacher.

The findings indicate that the teaching profession should be understood as a complex of values and ideals that are essential to succeed in teaching. In the teacher students reflective self-portraits teaching is dealt with as a normative concept and has implications for the social practices in teaching. I argue that teacher education should be aware of (creating) discursive spaces in which student teachers have an opportunity to verbalize their values from life-history and evolving pedagogical practice: whom they want to be(-come) as a teacher.